{"id":37240,"date":"2025-04-21T03:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T03:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/37240\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T03:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T03:00:20","slug":"the-science-behind-the-return-of-the-dire-wolf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/37240\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science Behind the Return of the Dire Wolf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nature gave the world the dire wolf 2.6 million years ago<\/a>, and then, through the hard hand of extinction, took it away\u2014some 10,000 to 13,000 years ago when the last of the species died out. Now, the dire wolf is back, brought bounding into the 21st century by Colossal Biosciences<\/a>, a Dallas-based biotech company. On April 8, Colossal announced it<\/a> had used both cloning and gene-editing based on two ancient samples of dire wolf DNA to birth three pups, the six-month-old males Romulus and Remus and the two-month-old female Khaleesi. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,\u201d said Colossal CEO Ben Lamm in a statement that accompanied the announcement of the births. \u201cIt was once said, \u2018any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.\u2019 Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they are working on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: The Return of the Dire Wolf<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

So what, exactly, does that work involve?<\/p>\n

Traditional cloning\u2014the kind that famously resulted in Dolly the sheep<\/a> in 1996, and has since been used to create clones of pigs, cats, deer, horses, mice, goats, gray wolves, dogs and more\u2014is a relatively straightforward, if invasive, process. First, a single cell is taken from a tissue sample of the animal to be cloned. That cell\u2019s nucleus\u2014which contains the individual\u2019s entire genetic code\u2014is then extracted and inserted into a donor ovum from the same species whose own nucleus has been removed. The ovum carrying the new genetic material is allowed to develop into an embryo and then transferred into the womb of a surrogate, which ultimately gives birth to an exact duplicate of the animal from which the donor cell was taken.<\/p>\n

Colossal says its dire wolf work had key differences. Scientists first analyzed the genome of the dire wolves contained in the ancient tooth and skull. Comparing those genomes to that of the gray wolf\u2014the dire wolf\u2019s closest living relative\u2014they identified 20 differences in 14 genes that account for the dire wolf\u2019s distinguishing characteristics, including its greater size, white coat, wider head, larger teeth, more powerful shoulders, more-muscular legs, and characteristic vocalizations, especially howling and whining.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Next, they harvested endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which form the lining of bloodvessels, from the bloodstreams of living gray wolves\u2014a less invasive procedure than taking a tissue sample\u2014and edited the 14 genes in their nuclei to express those 20 dire wolf traits. This is trickier than it seems, since genes often have multiple effects, not all of them good. For example, as the company explains in its press release, the dire wolf has three genes that code for its light coat, but in gray wolves they can lead to deafness and blindness. The Colossal team thus engineered two other genes that shut down black and red pigmentation, leading to the dire wolf\u2019s characteristic light color without causing any harm in the edited gray wolf genome.<\/p>\n

Once this was finished, the edited nuclei were next extracted from the cells and inserted into denucleated gray wolf ova. The ova were left to grow into embryos and 45 were transferred into the wombs of two domestic hound mixes. One embryo in each surrogate mother took hold, and after 65 days of gestation, Rolulus and Remus were born. A few months later, the procedure was repeated with a third surrogate who ultimately gave birth to Khaleesi.\u00a0 All three births were conducted by scheduled cesarean section to minimize the chances of injury during delivery. No surrogate dogs had a miscarriage or stillbirth during the process.<\/p>\n

Colossal plans to use similar techniques to bring back the Ice Age woolly mammoth in 2028, editing living cell nuclei from Asian elephants\u2014the mammoth\u2019s closest living kin\u2014to express mammoth traits preserved in nearly 60 sets of Ice Age remains. In early March, the company announced<\/a> that it had successfully tested its methods in laboratory mice, producing 38 woolly mouse pups which bear the mammoth\u2019s signature shaggy coat. Now it says it\u2019s on track to have a surrogate elephant pregnancy in 2026 (elephants take nearly two years to gestate).<\/p>\n

Other work in Colossal\u2019s labs involves not bringing back extinct animals but attempting to save endangered ones. Endangered species can suffer from several issues, including a lack of genetic diversity\u2014known as a \u201cgenetic bottleneck.\u201d The relatively few animals left repeatedly mate with one another, and the inbreeding results in birth defects, sterility, and health problems proliferating through the species. Colossal has targeted some species with these problems, and is working to genetically edit more diversity into their populations.<\/p>\n

One such project involves the all-but vanished pink pigeon. The pink pigeon species is indigenous to the island nation of Mauritius and once thrived there, until it lost its habitat as more and more of the island was given over to sugar plantations. Humanity\u2019s introduction of rats and cats\u2014which attack pigeon nests\u2014drove the bird\u2019s numbers down to just ten individuals. With the help of captive breeding programs, more than 650 pigeons were hatched and raised and released back on Mauritius. But with so few birds from which the captive population was bred, the species is experiencing high levels of infertility because of the genetic bottleneck.<\/p>\n

To get around that, the scientists first tap into the fertilized egg of a pink pigeon and extract what are known as primordial germ cells (PGCs)\u2014the cells that eventually become sperm and egg. In the lab, scientists then genetically edit the PGC genome to introduce greater genetic diversity\u2014though at the moment Colossal is still studying the pink pigeon alleles and doesn\u2019t yet know what traits that more-diverse coding will produce. Then, using the fertilized egg of a common chicken\u2014which is far more plentiful than a pink pigeon egg\u2014they inject the PGCs into the embryo. Once there, the cells travel to the gonads and create an embryo that, after it hatches, grows, and reaches sexual maturity, will produce not chicken chicks, but pigeon chicks. Eventually, those pigeons would be released into the wild population, producing genetically diverse young and helping to fortify the species.<\/p>\n

None of this is easy and none of it comes cheap\u2014though with a valuation of $10.2 billion, Colossal has the resources to pursue the science without too much concern about the price. And the company is not going it alone. It is partnering with conservation organizations such the American Wolf Foundation<\/a>, The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation<\/a>, Save the Elephants<\/a>, and Conservation Nation<\/a>. The company worked with the indigenous MHA Nation<\/a> tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) on the dire wolf project, and the tribes have expressed a desire to have dire wolves live on their lands in North Dakota. Colossal also says it’s in advanced negotiations with the government of North Carolina to use its conservation strategies to help strengthen the endangered red wolf population there. <\/p>\n

The company also believes that the new EPC cloning technique will allow them to save blood samples of existing species in a biobank as a hedge against their ever becoming endangered in the future. Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, the most conspicuous of the animals to emerge from Colossal\u2019s labs, will surely not be the last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nature gave the world the dire wolf 2.6 million years ago, and then, through the hard hand of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3846],"tags":[933,267,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-37240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-genetics","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114373723833898966","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}