Biotech company Colossal Biosciences said it has brought back the dire wolf, an animal that went extinct 10,000 years ago, through its de-extinction process.
“We’ve taken a gray wolf genome, a gray wolf cell. which is already genetically 99.5% identical to dire wolves because they’re very closely related,” Shapiro said. “And we’ve edited those cells at multiple places in its DNA sequence to contain the dire wolf version of the DNA.”
My understanding is that that they identified genes associated with 20 key characteristics of direwolves, and edited those genes in the grey wolf genome. I guarantee that there are likely thousands of direwolf genes that they overlooked, so technically they didn’t create a direwolf. They created a grey wolf that looks like a direwolf.
My understanding is that that they identified genes associated with 20 key characteristics of direwolves, and edited those genes in the grey wolf genome. I guarantee that there are likely thousands of direwolf genes that they overlooked, so technically they didn’t create a direwolf. They created a grey wolf that looks like a direwolf.
So…the proper correction turned out to be much less dire.