It is a fierce majestic beast that disappeared thousands of years ago, with the exception of artistic renderings in books and on the screen, as in Game of Thrones.
Or, perhaps, it’s just a gray wolf with some adjustments.
The American Colossal Biosciences Biotechnology Society made a surprise announcement on Monday, saying that it brought back the terrible wolf of between the dead, thus achieving the first successful “de-extinction” of the company.
Colossal presented videos of the white-white wolf puppies wandering in its 2,000 acres habitat in an unhappy place in the north of the United States, marking a great victory for the company which also works to relive the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger.
But some scientists say that if the existence of Wolves is an impressive feat, they are not exactly as announced.
“I want to see articles evaluated by peers get out of it, to have a better idea of what has been done and what is known and what is not done,” said Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at the University of Stanford.
He says that seeing the puppies made him smile and was a welcome surprise in a differently dark newspaper.
But in his opinion, creation is more a “disastrous wolf”.
“I think it is important for people to remember that they are not disastrous wolves. There are gray wolves that have disastrous wolf characteristics,” said Greely. “On the other hand, they seem to be closer to the disastrous wolves than anything else than anyone is seen for 13,000 years, and it’s pretty cool. And they are cute like hell.”
Once chased away great prey
Large wolf species have traveled the Americas for more than 100,000 years, before disappearing around 13,000 years ago.
He would have driven out great prey such as horses, bison and giant lazy people, and have disappeared largely because his species of prey have died – partly because of hunting by humans.
Colossal’s scientific director Beth Shapiro said scientists extracted DNA from a 13,000 -year -old tooth and an inner ear bone from 72,000 years from a terrible wolf skull, and extracted DNA to assemble genomes.
They determined that the gray wolf was its nearest living parent – “99.5% identical” in DNA, she says – and similar but larger, more muscular and with a lighter coat, a wider skull and a stronger jaw.
Scientists then modified the gray wolf cells to give them disastrous wolf features, making 20 modifications in 14 genes before creating embryos and setting them on large domestic dogs.
Three of the eight dogs used as substitution mothers gave birth to disastrous wolves, said Shapiro, and mothers were then anonymously adopted through the American Humane Society – “So, somewhere there, there are families who adopted a dog who gave birth to a terrible wolf, and they do not know.”
Colossal says that two male puppies, Romulus and Remus, were born on October 1 – now putting them in the first stages of adolescence – while Khaleesi, a woman, was born on January 30 and is almost at the age when she can be “presented to the boys,” said Shapiro.
Kevin Campbell, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Manitoba, says that if puppies look a lot like disastrous wolves, it is difficult to know how physiologically they are.
“They edited 20 different changes … which affected 14 genes. And to put it in perspective, a wolf probably has 22 or 23,000 different genes,” he said. “Right now, what we have is a gray wolf of 99.999%, with 0.001% wolf desire.”
Bring phenotypes back
Shapiro recognizes that puppies are not exactly the same as the disastrous wolves of yesteryear, but says that the idea was to create something with the same characteristics that can live a healthy life in the modern era.
“When we think of de-extinction, we do not imagine that we are going to recreate something genetically identical to something that was alive,” she told CBC News. “It is not practical and probably also what we want. Instead, we want to bring these phenotypes, the extinct features that have defined this species.”
The CEO of Colossal, Ben Lamm, said that the project started about two years ago, for people to talk about wolves and save the Red Wolf in critical danger of extinction.
On this front, the private company based in Dallas announced on Monday that it had also produced four cloned red wolves using a new less invasive technique that it has developed while working on disastrous wolves.
Lamm says that several Aboriginal American communities have expressed their interest in reintroducing disastrous wolves on their land, but says that it would be a complicated process requiring in -depth consultation with landowners, governments and other stakeholders.
For the moment, Colossal closely studies disastrous puppies and does not intend to present them to a wild habitat.
Some have criticized the colossal de-extinction projects to withdraw the attention of the less flashy work carried out by organizations dedicated to the conservation of existing species and their habitats.
Joe Walston, Head of World Conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, says that he appreciates that de-extinction projects can inspire people to think of species conservation, and it is not opposed to the use of technology as a single tool to help preserve species like red wolf.
But most species, he says, can recover at an “incredible rhythm” if their habitats are simply preserved and left alone.
“We have tigers, we have lions, we themselves have wolves, we have these great predators who go to this land which are in difficulty and need our aid,” he said.
“Sometimes we are too distracted by the novelty of something and forget that what we already have on earth at the moment is the assembly of the most remarkable species that the world has ever seen.”
