It announced that it used “deft genetic engineering and ancient DNA” to breed three dire wolf puppies – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – and to “de-extinct” the species.
However, independent scientists, like Zoologist Philip Seddon, have said the animals are not actually dire wolves but “genetically modified grey wolves.”
Experts told BBC News that there are “important biological differences” between the “de-extinct” wolf on the cover of every news publication and the dire wolf that roamed during the last ice age and went extinct ages ago.
Dr Rawlence explained that the ancient dire wolf DNA—extracted from fossilised remains—is too degraded and damaged to be copied or cloned biologically.
“Ancient DNA is like if you put fresh DNA in a 500-degree oven overnight,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “It comes out fragmented – like shards and dust. You can reconstruct [it], but it’s not good enough to do anything else with.”
How does that matter?
Dr Beth Shapiro, a biologist from Colossal Biosciences, argued that this feat represents de-extinction and described it as recreating animals with the same characteristics.
“A grey wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf – they’re genetically really similar – so we targeted DNA sequences that lead to dire wolf traits and then edited grey wolf cells… then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves,” she said.
But, Dr Rawlence argued that the de-extinction team at Colossal Biosciences used new synthetic biology technology to create a dire wolf-like animal, and not the ice age beast itself.
He said they sniped out pieces of DNA and inserted them into the genetic code of a living animal with its entire biological blueprint intact, in this case, a grey wolf.
“So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur,” said Dr Rawlence. “It’s a hybrid.”
Dr Rawlence also said that dire wolves diverged from grey wolves between 2.5 to six million years ago. “It’s in a completely different genus to grey wolves.”
“Colossal compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the grey wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a dire wolf,” he told BBC News.
‘Extinction is still forever’: Why is a distinction important?
Dr Rawlence argued that there needs to be a proper scientific distinction between an extinct animal and its bio-generated clone of years later “Because extinction is still forever”.
“If we don’t have extinction, how are we going to learn from our mistakes? Is the message now that we can go and destroy the environment and that animals can go extinct, but we can bring them back?” he asked.
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