Colossus Bioscience creation of the woolly mice Tuesday in a news release and posted a scientific paper online detailing the achievement. Scientists implanted genetically modified embryos in female lab mice that gave birth to the first of the woolly pups in October.
Reviving extinct species like the mammoth, the dodo and others could help repair ecosystems. An elephant that gets turned into a Mammoth would be able to walk around the Tundra to pack snow and grass. This would slow any release of global warming gases and slow melting of ice caps.
They identify the genes responsible for making mammoths distinctive. They compared ancient samples of genetic material from mammoths with genetic sequences of African and Asian elephants, the mammoth’s closest living relative. These included long, woolly hair and a way of metabolizing fat that helped the animals survive well in the cold.
The mice also have fat similar to the mammoth, Colossal says, enabling them to survive in cold weather.
They will edit the genes in the embryos of Asian elephants and implant the modified embryos into female elephants so that they can give birth to calves with the key traits that made the mammoths distinctive. Colossal hopes to produce mammoth-like Asian elephant embryos by next year and their first calves by 2028.
The company is also working on bringing back the dodo bird and the Tasmanian tiger.
Multiplex-edited mice recapitulate woolly mammoth hair phenotypes
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) possessed a thick woolly coat and other cold-adaptive traits that enabled survival in harsh Arctic environments. Current de-extinction efforts focus on genetically modifying the closely related Asian elephant to express woolly mammoth traits. In this study, they establish a multiplex-edited mouse model with modifications in genes associated with hair morphology and lipid metabolism, enabling insights into traits involved in developing woolly hair and cold tolerance. Our optimized workflows achieved high editing efficiencies and produced genetically modified mice with simultaneous editing of up to seven different genes. Selected modifications include loss-of-function mutations in Fgf5, Tgm3, and Fam83g, among others. The resulting mice display exaggerated hair phenotypes including curly, textured coats, and golden-brown hair. This study establishes a rapid platform for testing mammoth-centric genetic variants while advancing methods for complex genetic model generation. These approaches inform de-extinction efforts and research into the genetic basis of mammalian hair development and cold adaptation.
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Half the way to Tribbles.
These mice could demand big bucks, if they decide to offer them as pets.
Then, in five years we can see massive herds of escaped and released Woolly Mouse descendents sweeping across the frozen fields of the upper Midwest.
Devastating spring plantings of soy and corn.
But they do look cool, don’t they?
They do.