After Jurassic Park, Arctic Park? An American company has set itself the task of recreating the woolly mammoth, which disappeared 4,000 years ago, and replanting it in Arctic soil. Her name: Colossal. Launched Monday by businessman Ben Lam and geneticist George Church, who has been working on the topic for several years, Colossal plans to insert DNA sequences from a woolly mammoth, collected from remains preserved in Siberian soil, into the genome of Asian elephants, to create the hybrid species. Colossal reports that Asian elephants and woolly mammoths have a similar DNA ratio of 99.6%. On his website.
The biotech company, which has successfully raised $15 million in private funding to achieve this goal, will launch a practical and efficient model for de-extinction and be the first to apply advanced genetic modification techniques to reintegrate the woolly mammoth in the Arctic tundra,” the tundra said in a statement.
If it succeeds, it will be a fictional elephant, a whole new being
The concept of de-extinction, the concept of creating an animal similar to an extinct species using genetics, is not unanimous in the scientific community, with some researchers skeptical of its usefulness or concerned about the risks of its application.
“There are a lot of issues that will emerge in the process,” says biologist Beth Shapiro. In the New York Times. Tori Heridge, a biologist and paleontologist in London, wrote on Twitter “This is not the end of extinction. There will never be a mammoth on Earth again. If it succeeds, it will be a fictional elephant, a completely new organism, synthetic and genetically modified.” Natural History Museum.
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