We’re one step away from ‘resurrecting’ a mammoth by 2028, study says

A biotech company aiming to “de-extinct” prehistoric animals recently announced a breakthrough that could allow woolly mammoths to return to the Arctic tundra by 2028. To do this, researchers managed to implant skin cells from modern elephants into the embryonic state and create stem cells that can develop into any cell in the body.

Dallas, US-based Colossal Biosciences, which bills itself as an “extinction-fighting company,” explained in a press release: The return of the mammoth depends on controlling its most important phenotypic characteristics. such as its ability to survive in cold climates, its curved teeth and round skull.

It comes down to eliminating the genes needed to reproduce these traits, according to Eriona Hysolli, head of biological sciences at Colossal Biosciences.S. In this sense, the best way is to look at the closest living relative of the species you are considering resurrecting; In the case of the mammoth, it is the Asian elephant that is 99.6% genetically identical.

Why does Colossal want to resurrect an animal from extinction?

One of the main justifications for Colossal Climate change is key to bringing mammoths and eventually other herbivores back to life. They believe herds of ‘extinct’ mammoths may have trampled and compacted the permafrost in the Arctic and prevented it from thawing. As we know, frozen permafrost stores high amounts of carbon dioxide in it, and if this carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it will contribute even more to the greenhouse effect.

According to geneticist and co-founder of Colossal Bioscience, George Church, the expectation is:to positively impact an ecosystem that was disrupted by humans perhaps 10,000 years agoIt caused the shift from grasses to trees, contributing to the extinction of almost all large Arctic herbivores,” he explained to IFLScience.

What is left to create a real mammoth?

Colossal claims to have managed to produce the stem cells the mammoths needed to survive extinction. suppression of common elephant’s famous anti-cancer genes (Protects DNA against mutations). He then immersed those cells in “the right chemical cocktail,” as described in the study published on the yet-to-be-peer-reviewed online repository bioRxiv.

Did you like the content? So stay updated with more studies like this on TecMundo and take the opportunity to share the article with your friends on social media. To the next one!