Scientists trying to revive the mammoth and other prehistoric beings

According to a study by the Colossal company, the United States is funding research a the resurrection of extinct animals, such as the woolly mammoth and the thylacine.

The investigation would be conducted through an investment firm called In-Q-Tel, funded by the CIA. In this way, the US intelligence agency would also contribute money to the Texas-based technology company Colossal Biosciences.

According to the Colossal website, the company’s goal is “to bring the woolly mammoth thunder over the tundra back through the use of genetic engineering.” It is that is, using technology to modify an organism’s DNA.

Could the return of extinct animals be a reality?

Colossal has also expressed interest in resurrecting the extinct thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a wolf-like marsupial that went extinct in the 1930s, as did the extinct dodo bird.

For its part, “the CIA is less interested in thundering mammoths and roaring thylacines than in the underlying genetic engineering technology that Colossal plans to develop,” according to a blog post by In-Q-Tel.

“Strategically, it’s less about the mammoths and more about skill,” company officials wrote.

De-extinction may sound like science fiction, and to some extent it is. There is no way to restore the woolly mammoth to its appearance ten thousand years ago.

However, Using DNA-editing tools, scientists can insert cold-hardiness traits into the DNA sequences of modern elephants. making them genetically similar to woolly mammoths.

The resulting creature would not be a true mammothbut a surrogate animal that looks more like an elephant with mammoth features.

What is the process like for reviving extinct animals?

The basis of this process is a gene editing method called CRISPR, genetic “scissors” that scientists can use to cut, paste, and replace specific genetic sequences in an organism’s DNA.

Many of the researchers behind CRISPR won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

According to the In-Q-Tel blog, investing in this project will help the US government “set the ethical and technological standards” of genetic engineering technology and will keep America one step ahead from competing nations who may also be interested in reading, writing and altering the genetic code.

What is the danger of reviving extinct animals

Not everyone is so optimistic about using genetic engineering tools to revive extinct animals.

Critics have warned that too if a company can design a healthy mammoth, that creature’s natural habitat is no more And even if it did, the genetic code can’t teach an animal to thrive in an unfamiliar ecosystem.

Some scientists even argue that the money spent on extinction projects it could go much further when applied to the conservation of live animals.

The controversy is already open.