Remember the “Dire Wolves” that Colossal Biosciences pretended to have brought back from extinction? (See all my posts on this ruse here.) Although Colossal said it had “de-extincted” the dire wolf, which vanished about 10,000 years ago, what they really did was put 20 edited bits of DNA into 14 gene regions of a gray wolf genome, and then put the edited wolf nucleus into a dog egg. A surrogate dog then produced three puppies deemed “dire wolves.”
Since gray wolves and dire wolves differ by 12 million DNA bases, the edits comprise only 0.0002% of the dire wolf genome. In other words, what Colossal produced, as anyone with neurons knows, is a grey wolf with a few morphological changes. (One of these is white color, which comes from loss-of-function mutations occurring in either domestic dogs or wolves.) This is by no means a dire wolf, or anything close to it. But Colossal needs to convince its investors that it’s on the road to de-extincting many things, including the dodo and the woolly mammoth, with the latter originally scheduled to appear in 2028. (The firm has since pushed back the mammoth date to 2030 or so, but I wouldn’t put money on that, either.)
What angers me about this stuff is the pretense of Colossal’s saying they had brought back an extinct species. At first they admitted that they hadn’t in this New Scientist article (click to read).
Then, realizing that this looked bad for the public and investors, Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, did a 180°, saying that they had brought back an extinct species, because they redefined “species”. Anything that looked like a dire wolf, she asserted, really was a dire wolf, no matter how superficial the resemblance.
No biologist with brains would agree with that, because you could produce such a “dire wolf” simply by artificially selecting a dog to be big and white. This duplicitous redefinition of species will, I suspect, be used in all their “deextincted” species, including the “woolly mammoth” which isn’t much more than an Asian elephant in a fur coat. (See my op-ed in the Boston Globe about this colossal bait-and-switch.)
I haven’t heard much about the three dire wolves lately, but Colossal just sent out a video to keep the excitement going. Here’s their announcement (note the “with it” jargon of bringing the wolves back from extinction “for a minute”):
The dire wolves have been back from extinction for a minute. We thought it was high time to rank the highlights.Welcome to the Colossal Top 10. For our first-ever countdown, we’re ranking the 10 greatest moments from Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, the world’s only three de-extinct dire wolves.
The video says, “It’s hard to put into words what it feels like to watch an extinct species return after thoursands of years. . .” I’d be embarrassed to work for a company that distorts the truth so strongly, but of course there is mucho dinero involved.
This really hits all your pain points, doesn’t it, Professor? Speciation, genetics and consumer fraud. I gotta say, it’s fun to see you hit the roof on this issue.
And of course they’re frauds!
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
If Colossal wants to really do something monumental, they could try “resurrecting” Democratic politicians in the mold of Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Sam Nunn.
And de-extinct Republicans like Dan Evans, who these days would be a moderate Dem.
Love to get a list of their investors. There is a real opportunity to make big bucks, selling a bridge in Brooklyn.
I asked Grok, which gave a list of investors in the de-extinction mishigas:
I read that investor Tom Brady actually had Colossal Biosciences de-extinct his dog, by cloning it. Ew.
In any case great timing with this post — several people on the lecture series committee at the Natural History Museum of Utah (a committee on which I serve) are big fans of Beth Shapiro and currently pushing her to be one of our speakers for 2027. I just forwarded your post to the committee chair.
I think you can pay $20-30k to get your pet cloned as a regular thing these days. But of course because of mutations and developmental irregularities, you never really get your pet back.
Happy to report back that the committee chair of the NHMU lecture series, after reading Jerry’s post, has agreed to take (and keep) Beth Shapiro off our list of potential speakers.
Sometimes sanity, and science, prevail!
Yay! You won!
So, “celebrity investors” illustrates something P.T. Barnum meant when he referred to “one born every minute”. I’m a bit disappointed to see Peter Jackson among this group of those born every minute. I had thought that the project of bringing Tolkien to the screen, and directing it effectively, required more neurons.
To say the wrong thing out of ignorance is acceptable, as the error can be corrected. But to knowingly—and repeatedly—promote a lie is unforgivable.
Not a Dire Wolf.
There is a wonderful Wolf Conservation Center in Norther Westchester, NY not far from where I live, and for a long time one of their ‘ambassador’ wolves (those that interacted with the public for education purposes) was a gorgeous white wolf named Atka. You can see Atka in this link. He apparently weighted only 80 pounds which is small for a full grown gray wolf, in which males can get up to 150 pounds. The so-called ‘dire wolves’ are white and the males will apparently reach 150 pounds. Their behavior does not seem at all different from that of other wolves. Shouldn’t we be spending our resources on preserving the remaining wolf species — some of which are endangered– rather than this farce?
https://nywolf.org/meet-our-wolves/in-memory/atka_1/
Of course Colossal should invest in worthwhile things. But would they get the star-studded investors and broad press coverage, which is what they need to survive?
” the “woolly mammoth” which isn’t much more than an Asian elephant in a fur coat.” Let’s not forget Russian “shuba” salad,
which is literally (by its name) herring in a fur coat.
I got through just over a minute of the video. I could not stomach more b.s.
I’ve read that one of the ultimate goals of republican investment in Colossal Biosciences is to show that if extinct species can be brought back ‘at will’, then there’s no need for laws like The Endangered Species Act of 1973. Getting rid of that legislation would then open the floodgates to exploitation of now-protected lands that republicans desperately want to get their grubby hands on….
I don’t think the Republicans have invested in Colossal, but a government official did say that their existence made it less pressing to save endangered species.
But what about genetic diversity? This is actually the most useful application of “de-extinction” that I could think of: harvesting ancient DNA from museum collections and using it to replenish the genomes of almost-extinct species with small gene pools.
In my view, genetic diversity is not nearly as important as people think in preventing extinction, but I have no room in the margins of this comment to explain why. . . .
I used to work for a different genomics company that Beth Shapiro was affiliated with, and was impressed with her research.
All that good feeling is down the drain with her shilling for Colossal… she and George Church, also respected for his prior work, have become an embarrassment.
Thanks for enumerating and elucidating the ways, though their claims and the damage to public understanding of paleogenomics will no doubt continue.
Yeah, it’s pretty sad. The word games Colossal plays to make these things “dire wolves” are terrible.
I think their stated reasons for doing all this in the first place are also disingenuous.
Like clearly it would be cool to bring back extinct organisms (if that’s what they were actually doing). But in my view, Colossal is just aimed at getting venture funding, trying to demonstrate that genome engineering is safe enough to do on humans and ease people into being comfortable with it, getting a bunch of patents, and trying to set themselves up for a Nobel (etc.) when their platform is eventually rolled out on humans.
At least that’s my opinion.
Well, well. The devaluation of language continues.
Genocide does not mean genocide. It is now simply a useful term for accusations.
Sex does not mean sex. I have no idea how many sexes are currently considered correct, but insisting on the biological definition can get one in serious trouble these days.
And now species. If it looks like a dire wolf, it is… It reminds one of Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
“How do you know she’s a witch?”
“She looks like one!”
It is painful to watch when a scientist is leading the pack on this one. As far as I can tell, Beth Shapiro is a scientist with a good track record, and people like that should be holding the line on science, not reinventing scientific terms when convenient. Maybe I’m judging too harshly, or simply being naive.