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It is tiny, but this laboratory mouse could have a mammoth effect.
With curly mustache and wavy, light hair that grows three times longer than that of an ordinary laboratory, the genetically modified rodent after colossal biosciences embodies several mammoth characteristics. The private company in Dallas is behind the efforts to revive the mammoth and other extinct animals.
Colossal said his wool mouse would enable their scientists to test hypotheses about the connection between specific DNA sequences and physical characteristics that made it possible for the mammoth that had died out about 4,000 years ago to adapt to life in cold climatic zones.
“It is an important step to confirm our approach to reviving characteristics that have been lost through extinction and that our goal is restored,” said Dr. Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer at Colossal, in a press release on Tuesday. Shapiro is currently on leave in her role as a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California in Santa Cruz.
The genetically modified mice are brighter than ordinary laboratory mitings. – Colossal biosciences
How to make a wool mouse
In order to create the wool mouse, Colossal said that it had identified genetic variants in which mammoths differed from its closest life representative: the Asian elephant.
The company’s scientists then existed 10 variants in connection with hair length, thickness, texture, color and body fat, the similar, well -known DNA variants in a laboratory room.
For example, scientists aimed at a gene known as FGF5 (Fibroblast growth factor 5), aimed at the cycle of hair growth and arise longer, shaggy hair. They also changed the function of three genes in connection with the development and structure of the hair follicles to create wool hair texture, wavy coats and ruffled mustache, the company announced in a press release.
Other target genes included MC1R (melanocortin 1 receptor), which regulates melanin production to produce mice with golden hair and not the usual dark fur and a variant associated with changes in body weight.
In total, the team made eight changes at the same time with three state -of -the -art techniques.
Colossal shared an unpublished or pre -printed scientific paper that describes research that no peer review has subjected.
“I think the ability to work on several genes at the same time in mice and do this and to receive the expected wool look is a very important step,” said Love Dalén, professor of evolutionary genomics at the University of Stockholm. Dalén is a Colossal consultant and was a co -author on paper.
“It is a principle that Colossal has the know-how to carry out this type of gene processing, including the insertion of mammoth gen variants into a different kind.”
Only ‘sweet, hairy looking mice’?
The research described in the unpublished paper were technically impressive and the genetic changes were precisely and efficient, said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem cell biology and development genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
“My biggest problem with the paper is that there is nothing in which the modified mice are cold-tolerant-indeed you introduce features that are obvious in mammoths that are obvious for the execution of the work,” said Lovell-Badge by email.
“As it is, we have some sweet -looking hairy mice without your physiology, your behavior, etc. not closer to know whether you would be able to give a elephant useful mammoth -like features, and we have learned little biology.”
Colossal has collected 435 million US dollars since its foundation in 2021 by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church in 2021.
The company plans to reproduce Mammoth, Dodo and Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine by the genome of the closest living documents of all kinds compared to the production of a hybrid animal, which would not be visually different from its extinct forerunner, could not be visually distinguished. Ultimately, the company wants to restore the fauna in its natural habitat.
In the case of mammoths, the company argues that it would compress the snow and grass with mammoth-like creatures by the Arctic, which isolates the soil, which contains the rate of permafrost thaw and the release of carbon in this fragile ecosystem. Colossal previously said that it was on the right track to introduce the first woolen mammoth calves in 2028.
Skeptics argue that the enormous sums of money that were invested in the project could better be spent elsewhere. According to say, the hybrid animals breed and breed living animals that are used as a replacement.
“Although we know a lot about maus genetics, we know much less about mammoths and elephants. It is not yet known which sections of the genome are of crucial importance for achieving the (required) characters to make an elephant for life in the Arctic circle, ”said Tori Herridge, senior lecturer at the School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, in a statement by the Science Media Center. “Genes that are connected to fur and fat in well -examined animals such as mice are obvious goals, but the devil is in detail.”
“If you do not decide to make every processing necessary … in the genome, you will only create a gross approach to an extinct creature that is based on an incomplete idea of what it should look like. You will never bring back a mammoth, ”she added.
Critics say that it will always only be possible to bring an incomplete approach back to a mammoth. – Colossal biosciences
Laboratory civil deals are usually genetically constructed to have certain characteristics, including human, to carry out research into diseases and drug development.
Rob Taft, a main scientist at the Jackson Laboratory, a biomedical research institution that helped Pioneer Humanized Laborine, said by e -mail that the Woolly -Maus was an “innovative expansion of the use of the mouse as a model system and an innovative approach to understanding the physiology of animals that have now died out”.
His biggest question was how Kolossssal would translate this research into elephants again.
“Working with mice or even cattle is relatively easy,” said Taffel. “We know a lot about reproduction in these types and assisted reproductive technologies are well developed and used in these species, but there is a lot about the reproduction of elephants that are not known, and assisted reproduction technologies are not well developed for use in elephants.”
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