Three genetically engineering wolves that may resemble extinct terrible wolves are jogging, sleeping and howling in a safe location not revealed in the United States, according to the company that aims to recover lost species.
Wolf puppies, who have an age of three to six months, have long white hair, muscle jaws and that already weigh around 80 pounds, on the way to reach 140 pounds in maturity, Colossal Bioscience researchers reported Monday.
Dire Wolves, who became extinct more than 10,000 years ago, are much larger than the gray wolves, their closest living relatives today.
Independent scientists said that this last effort does not mean that serious wolves return to the American grasslands in the short term.
“All you can do now is to make something look superficially as something else,” not completely relive the extinct species, said Vincent Lynch, a biologist at the University of Buffalo that did not participate in the investigation.
Colossal scientists learned about specific features that the terrible wolves possessed when examining the old fossil DNA. The researchers studied a 13,000 -year -old wolf tooth in Ohio and a 72,000 -year -old skull fragment that is in Idaho, both part of the collections of the Natural History Museum.
Then, the scientists took blood cells from a live gray wolf and used CRISPR to modify them genetically in 20 different places, said Colossal’s main scientist, Beth Shapiro. They transferred that genetic material to an egg cell of a domestic dog. When they were ready, the embryos were transferred to substitutes, also domestic dogs, and 62 days later the genetically designed puppies were born.
Colossal has previously announced similar projects to genetically alter the cells of living species to create animals that resemble extinct wimid mammoths, dodos and others.
Although puppies can physically resemble young wolves, “what they will probably never learn is the final movement of how to kill a giant elice or a great deer”, because they will not have opportunities to see and learn from Wild’s parents DIRE WOLF, said Colossal Animal Care Head, Matt James.
Colossal also reported on Monday that he had cloned four red wolves using blood extracted from wild wolves of the population of red wolf in danger of extinction from the southeast of the US. The objective is to bring more genetic diversity to the small population of captive red wolves, which scientists are using to reproduce and help save the species.
This technology can have a broader application for the conservation of other species because it is less invasive than other techniques to clone animals, said Christopher Preston, an expert in wildlife of the University of Montana who did not participate in the investigation. But it still requires that a wild wolf is sedated for a blood raffle and that is not a simple feat, he added.
The CEO of Colossal, Ben Lamm, said the team met with officials from the Department of Interior of the United States at the end of the project. Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, praised work in X on Monday as a “new era exciting scientific wonder”, even when external scientists said there are limitations to restore the past.
“Whatever the ecological function that the wolf direct that he made before he was extinguished, cannot perform those functions” in the existing landscapes today, said Buffalo’s Lynch.
