Wooly Mammoths finna eat

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The effort to regrow a woolly mammoth from the edited genes of an Asian elephant took a petri dish-sized move toward reality. De-extinction company Colossal Biosciences announced they can now propagate Asian elephant cells indefinitely from a single source in a lab, using the first-ever induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC).

The iPSC cells represent a single cell source that offers access to every other type of cell in a body, potentially allowing the creation of sperm and egg cells from the iPSCs. “Elephants are a very special species, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of their fundamental biology,” Eriona Hysolli, head of biological sciences as Colossal, said in a statement.

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Because mammoth DNA is a 99.6 percent match to the DNA of the Asian elephant, Colossal believes that gene editing can eventually create an embryo of a woolly mammoth. The eventual goal is to repopulate parts of the Arctic with the new woolly mammoth—dubbed a “functional mammoth,” this creature may effectively be an Asian elephant with a new type of hair and layer of blubber—to strengthen local plant life with the migration patterns and dietary habits of the beast that went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

By tweaking the genes of the Asian elephant, the team believes they can functionally tune the animal to closely resemble the extinct species. Having access to the iPSC may speed the process along, will ensure the team doesn’t have to interfere with the reproductive cycles of living elephants, and gives Colossal a roadmap for further genetic manipulation.

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