Wooly Mammoth Resurrection Begins with a Mouse

The company trying to bring back the extinct wooly mammoth last week announced an important first step toward their project: they’ve created “wooly mice.” The mice, little puffballs with shaggy fur, were developed by editing mouse genes associated with hair color, growth, and texture.

What Colossal Laboratories did not create was some unholy mouse-mammoth hybrid. The genetic changes were of mice not mammoths, but the achievement is proof of concept that the team can perform simultaneous editing of multiple genes — something that they'll have to do when they attempt to make mammoth-like changes in the elephant genome.

“Colossal’s landmark de-extinction project will be the resurrection of the woolly mammoth - or more specifically a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological traits of the woolly mammoth,” the company explains on their website. “It will walk like a woolly mammoth, look like one, sound like one, but most importantly it will be able to inhabit the same ecosystem previously abandoned by the mammoth’s extinction.”

The point? The company says the presence of a mammoth-like creature on the steppes will help restore the ecosystem and will assist conservationists in saving contemporary elephants from extinction. 

So we’re clear that the company will not be resurrecting an extinct species; rather, it will be altering the genetic makeup of the elephant to create a pachyderm that can thrive in a cold climate. For that they do need some actual wooly mammoth DNA, which they’ve harvested from nearly 60 frozen carcasses preserved in Siberian permafrost.

The company believes it will have an elephant pregnant with a gene-altered “mammoth” fetus some time in 2028.

Photo credit: Colossal Biosciences