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.
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.
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.