4 ms·

Every project I've seen of theirs has been like this one: take an existing animal and tweak its genome very slightly to make it look kinda like the extinct one,

Every project I've seen of theirs has been like this one: take an existing animal and tweak its genome very slightly to make it look kinda like the extinct one, then declare that they've brought back the extinct species. Never mind that it's still just a wolf with 14 very specific genes tweaked. That could be just a limitation of the current technology and one that they're working on fixing—maybe some day they plan to bring back large amounts of lost genetic diversity—but their PR around it definitely communicates that they see this as the de-extinction project itself, which sure does make it look like they're only really interested in building a zoo, not actually rebuilding true biodiversity.

bbor 2y ago
Plus, at a certain point we should probably ask what we're even doing here. At the same time and using the same ostensible "pro-environment" framework, we: 1. refuse to engage in biome modification to save soon-to-be-homeless species like the Axolotl, 2. are willing to go to great lengths to preserve existing biomes exactly as they are, such as opening up owl hunting permits to protect the western US's shittier owls from encroachment by the dominant eastern species, and 3. are trying to revive mammoths and dire wolves to increase biodiversity. If we truly care about biodiversity, we should probably decide upfront why we aren't protecting some of the 400K species of beetles or 150K species of flies (together making up ~1/3rd of all animal species) instead. Personally, my preferred answer is simpler: embrace human aesthetic preferences, rather than pretend we're doing all this for some altruistic, scientifically-supported cause. Not only should we respect nature, we should respect its inherent capacity for change and disregard for human morality. Nature is ambivalent towards mass extinctions, much less specific ones! TBH, the Red Mars books' discussion around when and why to preserve abiotic martian landscapes may have radicalized me on this issue...
- octopoc 2y ago
  A big reason why we should support biodiversity is that once an animal is extinct, it's practically impossible to bring it back. With small effort now we can avoid great effort later. And any ecosystem is so unbelievably complex that we just aren't yet at the point where we can predict exactly how things will adapt. I haven't read Red Mars but these are both very different from an abiotic landscape. You can easily go back to an abiotic landscape on Mars because that's the default. It doesn't take delicacy. And, an abiotic landscape is extremely simple compared to an ecosystem. We can easily predict what will happen if we go back to one.
- dbspin 2y ago
  >If we truly care about biodiversity, The 'we' here is the issue. Who is we? The human race do not share complex holistic goals, organisational frameworks, or even aesthetic preferences. It's a miracle cooperation exists at all at transnational scale. The hope that it could serve functional purposes - rather than alternately facilitating the enrichment of the very few, and constraining the worst excesses of that wealth transfer - seems to beg the question, how? 'We' don't truly care about anything, there is no we once the net gets that wide. Don't get me started on 'should', a word that shakes its head in impotence.
naravara 2y ago
I really don’t even see the point in “deextincting” animals that went extinct due to climate or geological changes. They’re not even fit for the present ecology anymore. De-extinction of species that died due to industrialization or human stress on the environment makes a lot more sense since there is, presumably, a vacant ecological niche they could be filling. Like bringing back the passenger pigeon or dodo bird, or repopulating the oceans with species that have been critically overfished. But who cares about bringing back wooly mammoths and giant sloths?
- gweinberg 2y ago
  I do. I couldn't care less about passenger pigeons though. To each his own.
- kakapo1988 2y ago
  Because humans wiped out the mammoths, giant sloths, and a host of other megafauna. All those species survived millions of year, and numerous previous ice ages, but had no defense against human hunters. So as each area on earth was colonized by our species, the megafuana were quickly wiped out in that area. I'm from NZ, and we had that event in our recent history. The islands had numerous species of giant birds, but these were wiped out quickly by the first humans who came here, just a few centuries ago. Same everywhere. We've been driving species to extinction for a long time.
fragmede 2y ago
14 isn't enough for you, though it is enough to influence looks to the point that it does look different enough, but how many genes need to be changed for it to count, for you? There's some 40 million differences between humans and chimpanzees, but only about 700 that are unique to humans.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Humans aren’t chimpanzees. For this to be a direwolf there would need to be zero differences.
- mkl 2y ago
  Source for those numbers? Your last sentence doesn't seem to make sense.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chimpanzee-genomes-reveals-striking-similarities-and-differences https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chi... gives the 40 million (35+5). It gives by name a bunch of genes unique to humans, though doesn't count them. 300 is just an estimate, I couldn't find a specific reference to that number, thought it's widely to believed to be in the hundreds (and not, say, the millions). Also https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chimpanzee-genomes-reveals-striking-similarities-and-differences https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chi...
    - optionalsquid 2y ago
      There may only be a smallish number of genes that are unique to humans or chimps, but obviously that is not the only source of differences between the two species. The first press release you linked states that, > At the protein level, 29 percent of genes code for the same amino sequences in chimpanzees and humans. There are about 20,000 known protein-coding genes in the human genome [1], so that alone refutes the notion that there are only about 700 differences unique to humans. Besides novel unique and changes in the protein sequences themselves, changes in gene regulation is another obvious source of differences. See this for a more thorough, and up to date, review https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-020-06962-8 https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1286... [1] https://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Info/Annotation https://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Info/Annotation
wyclif 2y ago
I think Colossal is betting on the fact that the general public will fall for sensationalism of this sort because of the low level of biology knowledge. This story makes me think Colossal is rather better at marketing than they are at genetics. What they've created here are not actually dire wolves but a couple of timber wolves with about a dozen edits to 12 million gene pairs and the result is creatures that have phenotypic similarities to dire wolves but not their complete genetic signature.
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  How much of the 'gap' between species do their edits cover? Are these like 50% hybrids, or much closer to the original donor grey wolves? Is it the kind of thing that could result in more authentic (for lack of a better term) dire wolves after a few generations of breeding?

bbor 2y ago

Plus, at a certain point we should probably ask what we're even doing here. At the same time and using the same ostensible "pro-environment" framework, we: 1. refuse to engage in biome modification to save soon-to-be-homeless species like the Axolotl, 2. are willing to go to great lengths to preserve existing biomes exactly as they are, such as opening up owl hunting permits to protect the western US's shittier owls from encroachment by the dominant eastern species, and 3. are trying to revive mammoths and dire wolves to increase biodiversity. If we truly care about biodiversity, we should probably decide upfront why we aren't protecting some of the 400K species of beetles or 150K species of flies (together making up ~1/3rd of all animal species) instead. Personally, my preferred answer is simpler: embrace human aesthetic preferences, rather than pretend we're doing all this for some altruistic, scientifically-supported cause. Not only should we respect nature, we should respect its inherent capacity for change and disregard for human morality. Nature is ambivalent towards mass extinctions, much less specific ones! TBH, the Red Mars books' discussion around when and why to preserve abiotic martian landscapes may have radicalized me on this issue...

octopoc 2y ago
A big reason why we should support biodiversity is that once an animal is extinct, it's practically impossible to bring it back. With small effort now we can avoid great effort later. And any ecosystem is so unbelievably complex that we just aren't yet at the point where we can predict exactly how things will adapt. I haven't read Red Mars but these are both very different from an abiotic landscape. You can easily go back to an abiotic landscape on Mars because that's the default. It doesn't take delicacy. And, an abiotic landscape is extremely simple compared to an ecosystem. We can easily predict what will happen if we go back to one.
dbspin 2y ago
>If we truly care about biodiversity, The 'we' here is the issue. Who is we? The human race do not share complex holistic goals, organisational frameworks, or even aesthetic preferences. It's a miracle cooperation exists at all at transnational scale. The hope that it could serve functional purposes - rather than alternately facilitating the enrichment of the very few, and constraining the worst excesses of that wealth transfer - seems to beg the question, how? 'We' don't truly care about anything, there is no we once the net gets that wide. Don't get me started on 'should', a word that shakes its head in impotence.

naravara 2y ago

I really don’t even see the point in “deextincting” animals that went extinct due to climate or geological changes. They’re not even fit for the present ecology anymore. De-extinction of species that died due to industrialization or human stress on the environment makes a lot more sense since there is, presumably, a vacant ecological niche they could be filling. Like bringing back the passenger pigeon or dodo bird, or repopulating the oceans with species that have been critically overfished. But who cares about bringing back wooly mammoths and giant sloths?

gweinberg 2y ago
I do. I couldn't care less about passenger pigeons though. To each his own.
kakapo1988 2y ago
Because humans wiped out the mammoths, giant sloths, and a host of other megafauna. All those species survived millions of year, and numerous previous ice ages, but had no defense against human hunters. So as each area on earth was colonized by our species, the megafuana were quickly wiped out in that area. I'm from NZ, and we had that event in our recent history. The islands had numerous species of giant birds, but these were wiped out quickly by the first humans who came here, just a few centuries ago. Same everywhere. We've been driving species to extinction for a long time.

fragmede 2y ago

14 isn't enough for you, though it is enough to influence looks to the point that it does look different enough, but how many genes need to be changed for it to count, for you? There's some 40 million differences between humans and chimpanzees, but only about 700 that are unique to humans.

mulmen 2y ago
Humans aren’t chimpanzees. For this to be a direwolf there would need to be zero differences.
mkl 2y ago
Source for those numbers? Your last sentence doesn't seem to make sense.
- fragmede 2y ago
  https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chimpanzee-genomes-reveals-striking-similarities-and-differences https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chi... gives the 40 million (35+5). It gives by name a bunch of genes unique to humans, though doesn't count them. 300 is just an estimate, I couldn't find a specific reference to that number, thought it's widely to believed to be in the hundreds (and not, say, the millions). Also https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chimpanzee-genomes-reveals-striking-similarities-and-differences https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/comparison-human-and-chi...
  - optionalsquid 2y ago
    There may only be a smallish number of genes that are unique to humans or chimps, but obviously that is not the only source of differences between the two species. The first press release you linked states that, > At the protein level, 29 percent of genes code for the same amino sequences in chimpanzees and humans. There are about 20,000 known protein-coding genes in the human genome [1], so that alone refutes the notion that there are only about 700 differences unique to humans. Besides novel unique and changes in the protein sequences themselves, changes in gene regulation is another obvious source of differences. See this for a more thorough, and up to date, review https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-020-06962-8 https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1286... [1] https://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Info/Annotation https://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Info/Annotation

wyclif 2y ago

I think Colossal is betting on the fact that the general public will fall for sensationalism of this sort because of the low level of biology knowledge. This story makes me think Colossal is rather better at marketing than they are at genetics. What they've created here are not actually dire wolves but a couple of timber wolves with about a dozen edits to 12 million gene pairs and the result is creatures that have phenotypic similarities to dire wolves but not their complete genetic signature.

Rebelgecko 2y ago
How much of the 'gap' between species do their edits cover? Are these like 50% hybrids, or much closer to the original donor grey wolves? Is it the kind of thing that could result in more authentic (for lack of a better term) dire wolves after a few generations of breeding?