Scientists at Colossal Biosciences have created a genetically engineered mouse dubbed the “woolly mouse” as a step towards their goal of resurrecting the woolly mammoth.
The end product is a new breed of mouse exhibiting several mammoth-like traits, including:
The team didn’t splice DNA from mammoths into the mice. Using a 52,000-year-old fossilized mammoth carcass, scientists reconstructed the 3D structure of ancient chromosomes.
Colossal said it had identified genetic variants in which mammoths differed from Asian elephants. This enabled them to pinpoint active genes related to traits like hair follicle development, critical for the woolly phenotype.
They then gene-spliced mouse genes to express features identified in mammoths (for those of you interested in the actual genes, follow this link). This technique ensured the resulting mice had the genetics that would result in the desired features.
While they might not be scary enough to star in the next Jurassic Park movie, Colossal says these fluffy mice could pave the way for lost giants to walk the Earth once again.By comparing ancient mammoth DNA to the genes of modern elephants, Colossal’s team has ‘resurrected’ the physical traits which once helped mammoths thrive in cold climates.By changing just eight key genes, the mice have been engineered to show dramatically different coat colours, textures, lengths, and thicknesses.In the future, this same technique could be used on elephants to produce a new generation of woolly mammoths which could be released into the wild.
They may not look like woolly mammoths, but they are adorable.
It must be stressed that the team used gene variants observed in healthy mice to avoid health concerns, so the “wolly mouse” contains no mammoth DNA. However, the goal is to use a similar approach on an animal a little closer in lineage to the mammoths.
Colossal’s woolly mammoth de-extinction efforts are focused on modifying an Asian elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative, to express mammoth-like traits. Over the past few years, the company has developed a suite of tools designed to analyze and edit DNA, among other moonshot endeavors like creating artificial wombs.The company’s multi-step pipeline involves identifying genes related to key traits, genetic modification of cells or embryos, implantation, gestation, and finally birth. Rather than creating a mammoth from the jump, an experiment which involves a 22-month gestation period, the folks at Colossal elected to test their pipeline through the creation of the woolly mouse.“It’s a validation, we’ve spent a lot of time and effort and money doing the computational analysis across 100+ genomes to identify these core targets that will drive both cold tolerance and some of these phenotypes that we’re looking for,” Ben Lamm, Co-Founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told SYFY WIRE. What’s great about our woolly mice is that it proves that our end-to-end pipeline for de-extinction works.”
However, there are many other aspects associated with woolly mammoths that have not yet been addressed.
The research outlined in the unpublished paper was technically impressive and the genetic changes precise and efficient, said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute in London.“My biggest problem with the paper is that there is nothing addressing whether the modified mice are cold-tolerant — through introducing traits that are apparent in mammoths — which is the justification given for carrying out the work,” Lovell-Badge said via email.“As it is, we have some cute looking hairy mice, with no understanding of their physiology, behaviour, etc. It doesn’t get them any closer to know if they would eventually be able to give an elephant useful mammoth-like traits and we have learned little biology.”
At this point, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next phase of research.
The following video has more details.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY