print-icon
print-icon

Mad(?) Scientists Bring Dire Wolf Out Of Extinction With Gene-Editing

blueapples's Photo
by blueapples
Wednesday, Apr 09, 2025 - 11:00

blueapples on X


When the Summer blockbuster Jurassic Park was release in 1993, I was all of 4 years old. I remember seeing it for the first time on VHS because there was actually a behind the scenes segment that played after the credits and the tape came in on of those cool plastic covers you had to squeeze to get it out of. Needless to say, the blissful naivety of youth cast a suspension of belief upon me that blinded me to the obvious absurdity of the plot. As time went on, that suspension of belief came crashing down on me. The first instance of this was when I discovered that Velociraptors were not much larger than the size of a chicken — far from the intimating cunning predators the film made them out to be. As I grew older and wiser, I like so many others with a slightly above room temperature IQ realized that the idea of building a theme park that presented that much clear and obvious danger was beyond absurd. While that epiphany utterly shattered the premise of the film for me the same apparently cannot be said for the scientists at Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences as the company recently announced it was able to clone the long-extinct dire wolf, bringing the species out of extinction.

By taking DNA extracted from fossils of a 13,000 year-old tooth and 72,000 year-old skull, Colossal Biosciences' team was able to recreate 2 full genomes of the species that went extinct over 12,000 years ago. Scientists were then able to harness the DNA using CRISPR gene-editing technology to alter the genes of the modern gray wolf and give "birth" to 3 dire wolf puppies. The gray wolf is the prehistoric dire wolf's closest living relative which shares 99.5% of its DNA, which means the ancestral species is not much larger than its descendant, measuring in at about 5 feet in length, 3 feet at shoulder height, and upwards of 150 lbs. The pioneering experiment is positioned to expand the scope of the application of gene-editing technology. “This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” said Ben Lamm, Colossal Biosciences' co-founder and CEO, in a news release.

After 20 edits to 14 gray wolf genes, 2 male dire wolf puppies aptly named Romulus and Remus after the patriarchs of Rome who nursed at the teat of a wolf for sustenance were successfully cloned on October 1st, 2024. On January 30th, 2025, a third, female name Khaleesi in a culturally dated reference to a Game Of Thrones character that makes the scientists sound like a bunch of millennial parents unable to come up with an original name that also makes no sense because her house is associated with dragons and not wolves was cloned as well. Despite a phenotype that bears a distinctly different appearance to the modern gray wolf, the dire wolf clones are very much genetically gray wolves more than anything else. “There’s no secret that across the genome, this is 99.9% gray wolf. There is going to be an argument in the scientific community regarding how many genes need to be changed to make a dire wolf, but this is really a philosophical question,” according to Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics based at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University who serves as an adviser to Colossal Biosciences.

In addition to raising scientific questions on what constitutes the de-extinction of a species on genetic lines, the cloning of the dire wolves also raises significant ethical questions. The scientists at Colossal Biosciences are also working toward cloning mammoths, dodos, and Tasmanian tigers in an effort to bring those species out of extinction. However, the endgame of those experiments beckons questions about what ramifications re-entering those specifies into ecosystems they have long been removed from would have on their modern ecology. For now, the 3 dire wolf puppies live on a 2,000-acre site in an undisclosed locations behind 10-foot tall fencing and are under constant surveillance by security personnel, drones, and cameras.

The tale of their pseudo-resurrection is another chapter in the history of cloning that demonstrates the Pandora's Box opened by the hubris of men who seek to play God. In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui captured the world's attention when he announced that his team created the first gene-edited human babies. Jiankui's team included a US scientist who participated in the experiment at a time when the gene editing used to edit the genes of the twins girls who were given birth to was still banned in the United States. Although Jiankui stated the DNA he edited in the children was done with the mission of bestowing them with delta-32 mutations to their CCR5 genes that would make the children resistant to HIV by disabling the receptor on white blood cells that the virus uses as an entry point to cause infection, his experiment was met with vitriol from the scientific community globally, whose members categorized it as human experimentation. Despite the opposition to Jiankui's research, the Wall Street Journal later reported that at least 86 people in China have been genetically modified using CRISPR technology since the first human trial began in 2015.

From military applications to the unknown impact changes to DNA can pass on to future generations, the cavalcade of ethical concerns that followed Jiankui's led to Chinese authorities suspending his research before he was sentenced to 3 years in prison for charges of illegal practice of medicine in 2019. Following his release from prison in 2022, Jiankui attempted to leave China for Hong Kong but the work visa he was granted was later revoked after it was found that he made false statements on his application. Jiankui returned to China were he became the inaugural director of the Wuchang University Of Technology's Genetic Medicine Institute in, you guessed it; Wuhan.

While similar ethical dilemma's to editing human genes are faced by the work being done at Colossal Biosciences, they too are weighed against potential benefits. Pragmatically, the gene-editing technology could be harnessed and be put to good use in the field of wildlife conservation. According to the International Union For Conservation Of Nature, over 16,300 endangered species on Earth today are at risk of extinction. In 2018, the last male northern white rhino die in Sudan. Although 2 still exist today, both are female, making the species functionally extinct despite efforts at in vitro fertilization to keep it alive. With other species destined for that same fate, CRISPR technology may be able to save animals like the white rhino without the risks presented to modern ecosystems that are posed by the premise of re-introducing species brought back from extinction.

Colossal Bioscience's scientific achievement of arguably bringing dire wolves back from extinction is a seminal achievement in the field of biogenetics. However, the experiment highlights how the burgeoning nature of this field is rife with concerns over the ethics of such practices. If the follow-ups to their cloning of the dire wolf go as badly as the sequels to Jurassic Park have, the unintended consequences of their scientists' experiments may prove that the risks far exceed the the rewards.

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
Loading...