Reviving extinct species

Heba Salah
3 days ago
2 min read

"These pups were the first to produce a howl that hadn’t been heard on earth in over 10,000 years." The New York Times published

Romulus and Remus came to birth on Oct. 1, 2024; four months later, their sister, Khaleesi, came to life. Although the three are wolves, they were in the womb of a dog. This is not the only strange thing here, as they are the dire wolves that went extinct 12,500 years ago.

How did that happen?

Beth Shapiro, a chef scientist in Closssal, says "gray wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf, they're genetically really similar, 99.5% similar, and phenotypically, their morphology is also similar, only dire wolves are larger, more muscular, and have these light-colored coats. We edited gray wolf cells to contain those dire wolf DNA variants. And then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves."

work steps

Clossal team isolated dire wolf DNA from two old fossils (a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull) and distinguished the key differences between the gray wolf and the dire wolf.
Then, they chose grey wolves' endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which line blood vessels, and edited the primary 14 different genes in the cell nucleus to match that of a dire wolf.
Scientists transplanted these nuclei into de-nucleated ova and produced embryos which were inserted into 2 surrogate hound mixes
The wolves born had white coats, larger sizes, larger teeth and jaws, more muscular legs, and characteristic vocalizations.

A dire wolf or genetically modified grey wolf?

The produced dire wolves were 99.5% of grey wolves. As a result, some genetics experts don't believe that the dire wolf has been de-extincted, as they don't have the technology to edit the whole genome. But they are a "slightly modified grey wolves".

While some believe that if they look like dire wolves and act like dire wolves, they are dire wolves.

What if the dire wolf were cloned?

The technique of cloning is similar to what Clossal team has done, but there are key differences, the primary one being that it requires a real dire wolf cell to insert in the ova. and the rest of steps are the same.

Many animals were cloned by that technique since 1996, were scientists cloned the first animal that way, Dolly the sheep.

The technology still produces problems in cloned animals, such as large birth size, organ defects, premature aging, and immune system problems.

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Assessed and Endorsed by the MedReport Medical Review Board