“We will see them in the not too distant future”

We humans love mammoths. They are the animal most represented alongside our ancestors in prehistoric re-creations, despite their smaller presence in cave paintings than less iconic animals like deer, horses, and bison. So it’s no surprise that it’s likely the first animal to walk the earth again after long extinction.

There has been talk of reviving the species for many years, and in fact some timid attempts have been made with animals such as the bucardo, a Pyrenean ibex whose last living specimen died in 2000.

However, it was in 2021 that the American company Colossal Biosciences announced that it was going to put this into practice with long-lost animals that this possibility went from theoretical or science fiction to surprisingly close reality.

Of course, the first species Colossal wants to eradicate is the mammoth.

Its CEO, Ben Lamm, estimates that they will achieve their goal in less than ten years. The company’s director of life sciences, Eriona HysolliEL ESPAÑOL reports that “at this point we have put in place all the necessary infrastructure and cooperation, and as we expected, this statement has not changed.”

The species disappeared from the mainland about 10,000 years ago, but a small pocket of the animals remained on the Arctic island of Wrangel, which survived for another 6,000 years.

Museums around the world hold many remains: skeletons and tusks, as well as skin, hair and flesh, preserved by the low temperatures in Siberia or Canada, where most of the specimens come from.

This meant that there were many opportunities to obtain mammoth genetic material, and therefore the possibility of recreating the animal again.

The Golden Age of Ancient DNA

“I think we are living in a golden age of paleogenomics,” he emphasizes. Love DalenResearcher at the Centre for Paleogenomics, Natural History Museum, Stockholm, Sweden.

“But it’s not something specific to the mammoth. There have been several major scientific papers published on the mammoth right now, so maybe that’s why it’s getting more attention. But in recent years, there have been papers on the genomics of extinct rhinos, saber-toothed mammals… toothed tigers, hominins (the ancestors of today’s humans), etc. So the golden age is about more than just mammoths.”

Dalen is, in fact, one of the authors of those recent “great scientific papers” on mammoths that appeared last month.

The first of these reconstructs the genome of the animals that survived on Wrangel Island and concludes that inbreeding did not cause their extinction.

The second reconstructs the three-dimensional structure of DNA, that is, how it is distributed in chromosomes, of a mammoth that died 52,000 years ago. The sample was provided by Dalen, and Mark Marty-Renomefrom the National Centre for Genomic Analysis of Catalonia participated in the subsequent reconstruction of the material.

This study “is an indirect step towards resurrecting the species,” says the latter. “The reason is that it gives us information about all the chromosomes (28) of the mammoth and, in addition, tells us that they are very similar to the chromosomes of the present-day elephant.”

“How the resurrection is mainly based on the “mammothification” of the current elephantOur work shows that the idea is not far-fetched, although it is not simple.”

Here’s the key idea. The extinct mammoth would not be a mammoth so much as an elephant whose genome had been altered to resemble one. The alterations would occur in the elephant’s gametes, and the mammoth would likely be carrying a pachyderm in its womb.

Marty-Renom does not think it will be possible to have living mammoths in ten years, as Colossal argues. Because although their work has given us a better idea of ​​which genes are expressed in the prehistoric animal and distinguish it from an elephant, “we still need to know what parts of the genome those genes regulate.”

Love Dahlen is more optimistic. “I think in the not too distant future we will probably see a pseudomammoth (a hybrid of a mammoth and an elephant). All necessary steps can be solved theoretically.although, nevertheless, a lot of innovation is needed.

The biggest problem is the gestation period. “Using an elephant as a surrogate mother is difficult from an ethical point of view, and the alternative of creating an artificial womb is very difficult from a technological point of view.”

However, if the idea is to resurrect the mammoth itself “both morphologically and physiologically,” it is necessary to understand which genes and other elements of the genome “underlie the characteristics that make mammoths truly distinct from elephants.”

Eriona Hysolli, director of biological sciences at Colossal, notes that the study that revealed the mammoth’s chromosome structure “doesn’t move the needle of resurrection one way or the other” because the specimen was old (52,000 years old) and the quality of its DNA was relatively low.

Overall, “it is very encouraging that the chromosome numbers in the two species are the same, as expected.”

He stresses that the big step towards the species’ revival was made possible by advances in sequencing technology.

“Previously, it took many labs and a lot of manpower to create a low-coverage ancient genome. Today, with a good sequencer, one or two graduate students can process several complete ancient genome sequences at once.”

Mammoth in modern Siberia.

The breeding technique is one of the most difficult challenges to achieve their goal, but Hysolli adds that “creating larger, more complex genomes from scratch will be relevant later in each stage of the de-extinction projects.”

Because the mammoth is just one of their projects, the first and most iconic, but they have set other targets, more recent in time: the dodo, a flightless bird that disappeared from the island of Mauritius in the 17th century, and the Tasmanian wolf, a marsupial last seen in the early 20th century.

Being closer in time makes it easier to obtain complete genomes and find related species that could gestate (lay an egg containing a modified embryo) the resurrected creature.

“Technology won’t be a problem,” says Marc Marty-Renom.The question is not so much whether it can be done or not, but whether it should be done or not.“We have many species that are endangered, and we should focus our efforts on preserving these species, rather than on restoring those that were lost long ago and which, moreover, lived in a completely different environment than the present one.”

“Wow,” he says ironically, “I don’t know how happy a mammoth would be in modern Siberia today.”