The phrase “dead as a Dodo” may no longer be applicable anymore as one Dallas-based company seeks to make extinction a thing of the past.
Colossal Biosciences has bioengineered a wolf that last roamed a vast range as far north as Canada and as far south as Venezuela some 10,000 years ago: the dire wolf. The company bred identical twin males named Romulus and Remus, and a younger female wolf named Khaleesi.
And just like that, these births may well have changed the concept of endangered species forever.
Colossal Biosciences co-founder and billionaire Ben Lamm, along with Chief Animal Officer Matt James and Chief Science Officer Beth Shapiro, spoke to Texas Standard about the accomplishmen – along with how they are treating the complicated ethical implications of such a feat.
Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, so how did you do it?
Beth Shapiro: One of the first things that we wanted to do was figure out the dire wolf genome. We had a version of the dire wolf genome that didn’t have too many of the bases covered from 2021. So we had to go out and get a couple more bones and extract DNA and sequence the whole genome.
Then we had figure out what it is that makes a dire wolf different from its closest living relatives, and of course, what is its closest living relative? Turns out that’s a gray wolf. That’s great. Dire wolves look a little bit like gray wolves, but they’re bigger, more muscular.
And also we learned by studying its genome that it had a different coat, different texture, different color, different length… So we had to go and figure out what DNA sequences made those changes.
And so what did you do, combine that with a wolf that’s currently extant?
Beth Shapiro: We started with the gray wolf once we knew that the gray wolf was the dire wolf’s closest living relative. And we took a blood sample and from that, we isolated some cells called endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs). These are great cells, it turns out, and can be used to clone lots of species. We’ve also cloned some red wolves using the same approach.
But we took EPCs, those cells from gray wolves, and grew them in a dish in a lab, and then we used the tools of genome editing to swap out 20 places in that genome for the dire wolf version of those genes. And then we took those cells and cloned those cells, and our puppies were born.
Tell us about the puppies. How old are they now? How’s their health? I know that you’ve been holding off on telling the world the news here. Are they in a lab or a large enclosure or something?
Ben Lamm: Yeah, Matt, do you wanna chime in?
Matt James: Yeah, certainly. The puppies, Romulus and Remus, are a little more than five months old and they’re already tipping the scales at 80 pounds. And then the female that was born – she’s about two months old and she’s growing quickly as well.
They live at a private facility on this amazing 2,000-acre ecological preserve that they get to call home.
Wow, Ben, why do this? What was the big idea?
Ben Lamm: So the big thing is, you know, this project came about when we were starting to work with some of our indigenous tribal partners. They started talking to us about bison conservation and some of the work we’re doing around saving the bison and the genetics of bison that we’re already working on through our Colossal Foundation.
In that, they started talking about wolves and the need to save wolves, and then they also talked about bringing back animals that had a spiritual connection to the land and ancestry to their people. They started talking the great wolf, and they started to talk about the dire wolves as what they believed were the great wolves in their culture. So that was amazing.
Then fast forward a few months, we were then in North Carolina talking about how we could help save red wolves, because the most endangered wolf in the world is the red wolf. And every technology that we make on the path to de-extinction, we make available the free for conservation.
But we also like to pair a de-extinction event with saving a species, and so we also – while we made three dire wolves, we actually made four red wolves. And then over the last couple of years, we’ve had a flood of parents sending in photos and videos and hand-drawn pictures of kids being inspired by the science that we’re doing, and we’ve got an influx of celebrity investors over the last few years.
And so the idea that we could work on a project that could help save red wolves, develop tools and technologies for conservation, as well as do something important to the indigenous people partners, all while inspiring people and bringing people from the world of Game of Thrones and whatnot into science was something that we just got really excited about.
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Yeah, I guess it can’t hurt that these are gorgeous creatures. I read that the pop culture aspect has a bit to do with this, no?
Ben Lamm: Yeah, I mean the pop culture for sure, right? It’s like, we think that science is for everyone and we love it when people on TikTok and X and Instagram and all these platforms are asking us questions and engaging.
I mean, like I said, we get hundreds of hand-drawn pictures every single week from classrooms and parents. So any way that we can inspire kids and give them hope for the future of conservation now, more than ever.
You know, you think on the one hand you’re talking about possibly preventing existing, but endangered, animals from slipping into extinction. I wonder if we’re really talking about too, though, the beginning of the end of the very concept of endangered species. What do you think?
Matt James: Well, I certainly hope that our technology can be a powerful tool to help fight the biodiversity crisis that we face today, but there will be more than just technology required to do that. There’ll also have to be a lot of grassroots conservation that goes along with it.
Beth Shapiro: And ecosystem preservation. There’s more to species than this work, right?
I think this brings up a real question. Where do these animals go? I mean, already, you know, biodiversity… You have adaptability among the current species. Where do you put these new species?
I know that you have what sounds like a growing library of sorts. I know y’all have been working on bringing back the wooly mammoth and that kind of thing. Where do they go?
Matt James: Well, we’re working with some of the world’s leading researchers in studying these extinct species and these lost ecosystems to really identify places in the modern world where these animals would thrive. We’re not trying to return animals and ecosystems from yesterday, we’re trying to help create adaptive qualities in animals that will thrive in tomorrow’s ecosystems.
So we’re working with a great network of advisors that help us sort of determine all those locations where they should be, what impacts, what areas would have the largest impact, and then we’ll make sure to help preserve those ecosystems and prepare them for the species returning tomorrow.
Well, obviously this has captured the public’s imagination and clearly investors as well. I was reading that your latest valuation is around $10 billion.
But I guess ethicists are going to say, “well, is this really about science or is it about creating creatures for human spectacle?” I mean, we haven’t really had serious public conversations about the larger impacts on the Earth or animal life, to say nothing about the human.
Ben Lamm: So we’re gonna lose up to 50% of biodiversity between now and 2050 if we don’t do anything. So we know the choice of doing nothing ends with us losing half of biodiversity on Earth. We need new tools and technologies in the fight against loss of biodiversity.
What’s incredible about projects like de-extinction projects is not only do they inspire the public and bring people into science, like young kids in classrooms and parents, but it also starts a dialog around species conservation. As I mentioned, all of our technologies are available for free for conservation, as well as we’ve launched our $50 million foundation.
And we’ve brought more awareness to elephant conservation, some of the core issues around elephant conservation including [Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus] EEHV, which is the number one killer of… It’s a virus that kills more elephants than poaching or any single other source of elephant death. And we have actually been working with Dr. Paul Ling to eradicate that, right?
And so the technology path to de-extinction, just like the path for the moon landing, is developing tools and technologies that we can use to help save species. And we need it now more than ever.
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You know, it’s interesting you should mention the elephant, because I know that there’s been a lot of attention focused on whether or not we’re doing enough or doing well enough, really, in just managing a species already.
You start to introduce reemergent species into the ecosystem, I think some people may wonder, well, are we playing God a bit here without the predictive tools or knowledge to foresee the impact? I mean, the best we can do is highly educated guesses. There’s always some variable we don’t see.
Ben Lamm: Well, rewilding is a very measured impact, right? And so no one just makes a bunch of animals – like with the wolf rewilding in Yellowstone or thylacine proposed rewilding in southern Australia and Tasmania.
No one just makes a bunch of them and opens the door. It’s a very stage-gated process involving private landowners, indigenous people groups, governments, ecologists, conservationists and whatnot. It’s a very thought-out process that is years and years in the making.
But I would argue that we play God every single day, right? Every single day we eradicate a species. Every single day we pollute and overfish our oceans. Every day we cut down the forest. That is a form of playing God.
I think that from a human ingenuity perspective, currently, as the apex predator on this planet, technology is the best we have, and we’re using technology in a lot of ways for bad. We should start looking at how we can use it for good.
I know Jurassic Park is referenced a lot and I know you probably roll your eyes every time you hear it, but I’m curious if it doesn’t point to the idea that science fiction does give us morality plays and cautionary tales.
Are there lessons to be learned from here? Are we opening a Pandora’s box? We’re not even sure of what the questions are.
Ben Lamm: Well, I think that DNA engineering and synthetic biology and genome engineering is a new set of tools that’s become supercharged through access to computers and AI.
But ultimately, people love to talk about Jurassic Park in the negative because we have to constantly remind people that Jurassic Park was a movie because they ask us, “didn’t you see what happened at Jurassic Park?” And we’re like, “you mean in the movie, Jurassic Park.”
But what was great about it is that Mr. DNA taught kids and parents there’s this thing called DNA and it’s made up of these letters. And now we as humans have the ability to engineer it and push it, right? Which, yes, comes with some ethical conversations, but leads to so many applications for human health care and also building resilience in our ecosystems and with our animal and plant life, right?
And so I don’t think that Jurassic Park was focused on conservation, but I may have missed that subplot. So we are very, very different, but yes, some of the tools are similar.
You worried about copycats? No pun intended. I mean, when you’re talking about the availability now of this, I can’t imagine there’s not going to be a race among other laboratories that are going to try to emulate what you’ve done here, because this is obviously something for which there’s a lot of public interest.
Ben Lamm: We’re not worried about copycats. I mean, I would encourage anybody that wants to work on species preservation and de-extinction is welcome.
You know, we actually fund 17 academic labs. We fund over 40 postdocs in other academic labs, and then we also have 95 scientific advisors that we work with, right? So we are a very inclusive company.
But that’s you, right? That’s why I say “are you concerned?” Because for all the controls that you have put on it, if this becomes a kind of race, there is no guarantee that others won’t share your high-mindedness about this approach.
Ben Lamm: I think that’s a risk in everything.
The technologies aren’t bad. To your point, people could do bad things with the technologies, but fundamentally, you know, I think hopefully we’re setting the right standard and ethical bar around how we approach all of the decisions that we make at Colossal.
That’s all we really can do, right? We can’t stop others from doing this. I mean, I’m hopeful that people will look at what we’ve done right and the things that we’ve done wrong and hopefully strive to do it even better. That would be amazing.
You know, even people who are involved with, say, the rise of AI are pulling back and saying “we need regulation, we need to have these ethical discussions on AI.” Now we’re talking about something that has the potential to have at least a similar sort of impact.
Is it time for those discussions to sort of become more public? Are you looking for regulation or what?
Ben Lamm: 100%, and we actually work very closely with the federal government.
We actually just did a briefing two weeks ago with the Department of Interior on these technologies, how they can be used to save critically endangered species, how do we get animals off the endangered species list versus celebrating when they go on the endangered species list… How we use these technologies right now in America.
And so that’s something that we are constantly doing. Full disclosure: the federal government, In-Q-Tel (IQT), which is part of the intelligence community’s venture capital firm, is actually an investor in the business. So we do brief the IC and the DOD quite frequently as well.
Do any of you have any misgivings or concerns? I mean obviously this is huge news and everyone’s celebrating and it’s a time for celebration… But at the same time, does this development give you pause about where this might go and what the negative implications might be?
Matt James: I wouldn’t say it gives us pause. I think, if anything, it creates excitement and it gives us an opportunity to take a leading role in shaping the ethics and regulatory environment of this powerful technology.
Beth Shapiro: You know, when we look around the world, what we see are ecosystems that are changing at a rate that is faster than evolution can keep up. And it’s really difficult for anybody to have an idea about where to start.
Everybody knows we want to do something. We need to do something to change what’s happening today. And I think what this does is it writes something down that we can do.
We have achieved this crazy, exciting, innovative moonshot goal and now we have more work to do. We have to figure out how to expand these technologies to other species, to figure how to make this work for birds.
It’s an opportunity and it’s opportunity that we can’t let slow down now. I think what we need to not do now is we need to not drop this ball.
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