by Pa Rock
Friend of the Earth
CRISPR is a gene editing technology that allows scientists to make precise and targeted changes to DNA, a process that looks as though, on the surface, that it has the potential for major scientific breakthroughs which will be of immeasurable benefit to humankind, as well as furnishing plot lines for countless horror novels. In fact, novels based on the general principal of modifying or replicating DNA have already been around for quite some time, with Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" being perhaps the best known example.
In Crichton's book scientists were able to extract DNA samples from mosquitoes which had been trapped in amber for millions of years, and through that ancient biological material, re-create the animals from which the mosquitoes had been feeding. They then spliced the old DNA together with frog DNA from the present and got some unexpected results. The movie, "Jurassic Park," showed us both the marvels that science might one day produce, as well as the terrors that the same technology might inadvertently unleash upon the Earth.
Biotechnology like gene editing could result in grand achievements in things like medicine, disease control, life span, and even the preservation or the renewal of a species of plant or animal, and it could also bring about a calamitous situation that would severely and negatively impact life on the planet.
Many equated the new emerging technologies - like CRISPR - with playing God.
The idea had been around for years. Plants had been modified through various processes, and the notion of selected breeding of animals for the "survival of the fittest," had been a mainstay of evolutionary practices since the dawn of time; But as species developed and thrived, they also would, through various forms of competition, depopulate and die out. And when they were gone, they were gone.
But Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" postulated the possibility of bringing some of those species back, and now a commercial company, Colossal Biosciences, is claiming to have done just that . . . well . . . almost.
Colossal Biosciences, Inc, describes itself as "an American biotechnology and genetic engineering company working to de-extinct the wooly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, the northern white rhinoceros, the dodo bird, and the dire wolf." It has been in the news several times lately, including for its creation of the "wooly mouse," a step in its formidable goal of de-extincting the wooly mammoth by 2028, and there were several early stories about the company's grand plan of resurrecting the wooly mammoth.
But at some point Colossal changed its initial priority of recreating the wooly mammoth and replaced it with a focus on the dire wolf. (Undoubtedly due in some degree to the featured presence of the dire wolf in episodes of the television serial, "Game of Thrones" and the enthusiastic support of George R.R. Martin, the author of the "Game of Thrones" novel who is an investor in Colossal.
Colossal Biosciences has now announced that it has created three animals that are based in part on actual DNA from dire wolves. Two males, Romulus and Remus, were born last October, and a female, Kaleeshia, was born in January. The wolf pups have thick white hair, and are taller than modern gray wolves with longer tails. The two males now weigh 80 pounds each. All are being kept in a nature preserve that has be given some form of approval by the Humane Society of America and the US Department of Agriculture.
Each carry twenty genes that were taken from DNA samples removed from the bones and teeth of extinct dire wolves. The DNA was placed in embryos and then implanted in female dogs to gestate. The technology for importing greater amounts of DNA into new animals is still evolving, and until that happens, actual or complete de-extinction will not have occurred.
De-extinction has not happened yet, but science is definitely on the road to achieving that success. What the future may hold is generally unclear, but a couple of things would appear to be certainties: bio-ethicists will have plenty to ponder, and science fiction writers will have no shortage of material in which to delve.
(Perhaps if science keeps making these great leaps forward, and Artificial Intelligence blossoms beyond human control as it surely will, a future inter-galactic social order of computers will consider de-extincting humanity and we could all go live in peace on a reservation somewhere out among the other stars - without the noises of things like poverty, greed, war, bigotry, and hate. We might be worth a do-over - or not.)
2 comments:
A couple of comments from me. What we have here, is a privately owned company whose value has shot up since announcing their de-extinction plans. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe they’re anticipating an IPO. It’s just hard to trust science that has a financial incentive. I will give Colossal the credit that they admit their large white puppies aren’t dire wolfs. They just don’t say it with a loud voice. Wink Wink
Science writers are not scientists. Some of them are really good but they write for public consumption and sometimes they work for a client . If they work for a magazine or newspaper, they have to sell their news and frequently the writer doesn’t even get to write the headline.
No one knows whether the dire wolf coats were white or not. No one knows their pack dynamics. No one knows what their metabolism was like. No one knows what their hunting behavior was like. Gray wolves were not that closely related to dire wolves as their last common ancestor lived 5.7 million years ago.
Pa Rock said, “Each carry twenty genes that were taken from DNA samples removed from the bones and teeth of extinct dire wolves.” That’s not quite right. Dire wolf DNA was not placed in the grey wolf embryos. Instead, scientists edited a gray wolf stem cell, changing 20 genes. Fifteen of the edited genes were designed from the sequenced dire-wolf genome, … while five others were taken from known genes that change dogs or wolves.
You also said, “De-extinction has not happened yet, but science is definitely on the road to achieving that success.” They closest they may come to that is a wooly Asian elephant, a big, cold tolerant, gray wolf with a heavy coat, or an ostrich that looks like a dodo. They may get closer to a thylacine remake but it won’t be a de-extinction.
I don’t like the word de-extinction because it is misleading and it has been picked up on by Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum. He is seeing this as a reason to diminish the value of the Endangered Species Act. We don’t need to protect species, we’ll just recreate them through de-extinction.
There is some good science going on here, but changing the word “colour” to “color” when printing UK books for sale in the US doesn’t make a new book. I’m through ranting.
Your comments are very helpful in understanding a complicated subject, Rnager Bob. Thank you for sharing your hard-earned scientific expertise. I knew that my description of how the process worked was cloudy, but went with what I could find in the (popular) literature. Thanks for the clarification.
Your comment about Doug Burgum was also enlightening. I used the word "de-extinction" out of laziness. Instead of coming up with a more appropriate term for what really is occurring, I chose to go again with the pop literature. I hadn't heard about Burgum, (who, like me, also seems lazy), using these recent developments in science to sideline work to preserve endangered species, but that sounds very Trumpian. Junior and Eric Trump get off on shooting endangered species, and trying to save them probably smacks of being "woke" to that sorry anti-science presidential administration.
(It reminds me of certain "Christian" mouthpieces who say not to worry and waste time preserving the Earth because Jesus will be returning any day now - and God intended for us to enjoy the planet and use it up. While they sit at the bus stop waiting for the Rapture, the rest of us have to clean up their messes and do the hard work they refuse to do.)
I'm tired of ranting, also. Have a good evening, Old Friend, and thank you again for taking the time to respond to this blog posting wth your in-depth and very enlightening observations.
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