Science & Technology

Woolly mammoth de-extinction scientists have created woolly mice

By T.K. Randall
March 4, 2025

Image: AI-generated (Bing AI / Dall-E 3) De-extinction might seem like science fiction right now, but over the next few years we could see the first ever extinct animal (such as a thylacine, mammoth or dodo) being brought back to life.

Several firms around the world are currently working on the problem and one of these is Colossal Biosciences - a biotechnology company that aims to achieve de-extinction as soon as 2028.

The firm seems to be making some interesting progress - as evidenced this week by the news that its scientists have succeeded in creating something that puts us one step closer to de-extincting the woolly mammoth: the creation of woolly mice.

The reason for doing this is to validate methods of comparing the genomes of mammoths with today's elephants and finding a way to genome-edit the cells of the latter.

To this end, the team has been able to edit the genes of mice to give them a woolly coat reminiscent of those found on mammoths - a key adaptation for improving resilience to cold temperatures.To achieve this, they modified nine genes related to hair length, color and thickness.

But while the work is certainly impressive on a technical level, some argue that the money and effort would be better spent on trying to prevent existing species from becoming extinct in the first place.

There's also the problem that doing something like this in elephants will be much more difficult.

"Engineering a mammoth-like elephant presents a far greater challenge: the actual number of genes likely to be involved is far higher, the genes are less well understood - and still need to be identified," said Dr Tori Herridge of the University of Sheffield.

"And the surrogate will be an animal that is not normally experimented upon."

Source: The Guardian

Tags: Mammoth