On Colossal Biosciences's de-extincted "dire wolves"
I’ve followed the work of Colossal Biosciences for some time now. This is a company that wants to use the techniques of modern biology, and especially gene editing, to “bring back” extinct animals, very much in analogy to Jurassic Park (though they seem to dislike that analogy, one can’t imagine why). They specifically mention having their eye on bringing back the woolly mammoth, thylacine, and dodo, and I generally think that would be pretty neat. Especially for an animal like the thylacine, that went extinct recently, in large measure because of human stupidity and malice, if it were possible to undo that mistake, I think that would be great. Plus they look so cool.
I’ve said many times that the big ethical questions in the next few years are going to revolve around biological technologies like gene editing, and these questions are now hitting us directly. Talking with students, even the idea of bringing back something like the thylacine felt too much like playing God to some of them (didn’t God permit it to go extinct, one said?). But the bigger concern for me is that the same technological advances that might allow us to bring back the thylacine, will also make possible designer babies. Or perhaps a child, in some biological sense, actually without a mother or a father. Or (because Colossal would rather not have to use surrogate animals), artificial wombs that can raise a child from conception to “birth”. It’s somewhat in parallel to nuclear physics, which gave us nuclear bombs and nuclear power, except a good deal scarier, I’d say. Nuclear bombs can kill humans, but they don’t twist up our concept of what it means to be human.
As you may have heard, Colossal made a huge splash on Monday by announcing that, for the first time, they had succeeded, by de-extincting the dire wolf, which went extinct in North America around 10,000 years ago. They now have two male pups (Romulus and Remus) and one female pup (Khaleesi). They announced the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years (which is rather thrilling, I have to say), and if you haven’t gone to take a listen, take a listen. They also have a longer explainer on YouTube, which we watched and discussed in class (although it looks like they have edited it a bit since we watched it).
But is this actually de-extinction? I think most people who are following what has happened would say, no, it isn’t. My understanding is, what they did here is:
Developed a degraded dire wolf genome from two DNA samples they had, one from a tooth, and one from a 70,000 year old skull. How degraded I’m not sure, but DNA from samples that old is unlikely to be perfectly intact.
Compared that dire wolf genome to a genome from a modern gray wolf, held to be the closest modern living relative (DNA about 99.5 percent in common already).
Used CRISPR to edit the DNA of a gray wolf cell, in twenty places, to make it more like dire wolf DNA (particularly in places related to size and color, at least).
Took an egg cell from a dog. Removed the nucleus (where the DNA is) from the egg cell, and replaced it with the gray wolf cell with edited DNA.
Implanted that egg cell in a dog. Some time later, the dog successfully gives birth to what they are calling dire wolf pups.
But are they? From what I can tell, the general opinion of the scientific community is that what they’ve made are slightly bigger, stronger, whiter, gray wolves. And even in Colossal’s videos you notice them hedging their language a bit, sometimes speaking as if they have dire wolves, sometimes speaking as if they have gray wolves that look like dire wolves. It does raise questions about exactly what it means to have de-extincted an animal. If it looks like a woolly mammoth, acts like a woolly mammoth (really hard to know about that), fills the ecological niche of a woolly mammoth, but actually has a relatively larger amount of elephant DNA, have you de-extincted the woolly mammoth?
This also struck me a bit as an intellectuals/scientists v. businessmen sort of fight. A week ago, Colossal had about 30,000 followers on Twitter (including me). Now they have 140,000, after dropping an announcement post that now has 24 million views. If they had written a more restrained post about “we edited the genome of a gray wolf in 20 spots and now it looks more like a dire wolf” (which would still be an accomplishment, mind you), they get, what, one percent of the reaction? I bet not even one percent. From a business perspective, “first dire wolf in 10,000 years!” was a brilliant announcement.
It makes me uncomfortable because I feel like I see that a lot these days, sometimes even in the world of classical and/or Christian education - people speaking less carefully than they could, because careful, nuanced, more accurate speech won’t get them a reaction (that magic social media word, “engagement”). It’s hard to know what to do about that. You speak carefully, nobody cares, no public attention, let’s say maybe you lose your job or your company goes under. You play just a little loose with words instead, maybe don’t lie but speak so as to allow interpretations that you know aren’t quite true, and the public loves you and dumps money on your head. What are you going to do? I see some people making the latter decision, I never like it, but it’s not as if I can’t understand it.
We should not understate or under-think the implications of this technology. Any parent could, for a price, one day insert Einstein genes, or Mozart, or Napoleon, or recreate a child or loved one. The whole thing is creepy.
"You speak carefully, nobody cares, no public attention, let’s say maybe you lose your job or your company goes under." I see this dynamic even at serious news sites etc-- ones where I'd like to be able to read without that constantly flashing caution light. But having once or twice been misled, eh.