Scientists at Harvard University are making groundbreaking progress on an ambitious plan to bring back the woolly mammoth, which went extinct 4,000 years ago. The goal of this bold project is to genetically engineer a living elephant-mammoth hybrid that could potentially help restore the Arctic tundra ecosystem.
Lead by renowned geneticist George Church, the team has been working on this project for over a decade and recently made a significant breakthrough by reprogramming cells from an Asian elephant into an embryonic state for the first time. These stem cells can be manipulated to grow into any type of elephant cell, allowing for genetic modifications to create cold-resistant Asian elephants with woolly coats.
Not only does this project hold the promise of resurrecting a long-lost species, but it also provides new opportunities for conservation scientists to study Asian elephant biology and potentially increase cancer resistance in these animals. The team plans to utilize cloning techniques to insert genetically edited cells into a donor egg gestated by a surrogate elephant mother.
By studying the genomes of ancient woolly mammoths, the researchers have been able to identify unique genetic traits for engineering a mammoth-like entity. The hope is that these resurrected mammoths can help slow down permafrost thaw in the Arctic by grazing and compacting snow, similar to their ancestors.
In addition to resurrecting the woolly mammoth, Colossal Biosciences, the company founded for this purpose, has plans to bring back the Tasmanian tiger in 2022 and the dodo in 2023. However, there are still lingering questions about the ethical and practical implications of using endangered animals as surrogates for the engineered mammoth embryos. This project could potentially revolutionize conservation efforts and reshape the future of biodiversity on our planet.
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