Can genetically engineered ‘woolly’ mice help bring back the mammoth?

There are calculated 1.5 million genetic differences between wool mammoths and asian elephants. Colossial bioscience, Company With the aim of reviving the extinct species through genetic engineeringNow the mouse has done with “mammoth-like” leather, each with a maximum of five genetic changes. It seems, it seems, still the way.

It is true that the leather of these mice is long, curly and blonde. Thus, it resembles the coats of ghosts preserved in Permafrost. However, it is not clear to make the same genetic changes in Asian elephants, which are much less than hair per skin.

“Work in these mice does not mean that there is a solution to return a mammoth phenotype,” says teammates Love Dalén In Stockholm University in Sweden, Colossal is on the scientific advice board. “As you underline, we need to figure out that the skin grows more.”

With these genetic changes, the creation of Asian elephants will also be much more difficult than making mice. “Mice engineering mutations is a well-established process and is not particularly challenging,” he says Dusko Ilic King’s College in London.

The techniques that work in mice often fail in other species, and the sizes of elephants and their slower reproduction will increase the time and costs involved. “These methods are not developed for elephants and will not be easy based on anatomy,” says Vincent Lynch Buffalo, University of New York. “That’s probably the biggest challenge.”

But Lynch has no doubt that it can be achieved. In fact, Thomas Hildebrandt Leibniz Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany – Other Colossual Advisor – Say New scientist His team first gathered elephant eggs for the first time, even the results were still published. The egg collection is an important step in FIV and a genetic change in mammals.

So how did Colossal made his “mammoth” mice? The researchers began in search of mutations known in mammoth-shaped moths. “(T) The majority of these genes chose the coat of arms according to the front phenotypes,” they write in a paper released today, that is, it has not been a study.

When they are disabled at mice, they identified the pattern (curved), eight gones that cause hair color and length. Of these eight, one was naturally disabled in the ghosts, according to colossal.

From the mammoth genome, the team also identified a small mutation to affect the hair pattern, along with another gene involved in fat metabolism.

Then the company tried to change these genes in mice. For example, in a single experiment, he tried to use Gene Crispr To disable five of these genes, in fertilized eggs. 134 Edited eggs, 11 dogs were born and in one of these dogs, two copies of five genes were disabled.

In another study, researchers used the form of crispr It is called the basic edition To disable some of the genes in embryo mouse cells. This combined Another technique called a homologous recombination To make a detailed mutation found in the mammoth genome. Making specific changes is much more difficult than disabling genes, but the recombination method only works in mice.

Then the group sequenced the cells to identify the changes you want and injected to create mice Simple mouse. He injected 90 embryos, which were born four changes to the seven mice.

It can be said that these experiments can be successful with physical changes they want to create some mice, but only one of genetic changes is seen with what is seen Mamut Genome. Work is much more need to get The purpose indicated in Colossal With all the basic biological characteristics of the woodly ghosts “create a cold-resistant elephant” and about two years of elephant pregnancies, the colossal is time to fulfill the period 2028 imposed for itself.

“An elephant with a fur will not be a mammoth that will think,” he says Juan Antonio Rodríguez From the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Many of the 1.5 million differences between the ghost and Asian elephants have no effect, he says, but we don’t know what they are for sure.

If we did so, making harder changes is dangerous, Rodríguez says. “More things you change in an organism, the more likely you are mixing with key metabolic pathways or gene.”

Rodríguez, Lynch and Ilic are all against bringing ghosts. Lynch thinks it’s a bad idea, he thinks it’s a bad idea, no longer an ethical aspects of trying to change elephants genetically.

“The ghosts are gone and cannot be” disappeared “or revived,” Lynche says. “All I can do is have an elephant to look like a mammoth.”