On April 7, multiple media outlets reported that biotechnology company Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences had successfully brought back the dire wolf from its extinction during the Ice Age. This created large controversies about the authenticity of the animal and the ethics regarding its de-extinction.
The dire wolf, part of the new world lineage of the canid family, is a species of canine that went extinct during the ice age approximately 10,000 years ago, according to the National Park Service. Its extinction is closely attributed to climate change as a result of the receding glacial period and the subsequent loss of the megafauna populations that they hunted.
Colossal scientists were able to bring back the lost species by recovering 0.1% of the dire wolf deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from 46 identified specimens and using that as a blueprint to make 14 specific edits to a grey wolf, the dire wolf’s closest living relative. Using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) as their primary tool for gene editing, they modified and exaggerated certain traits of the grey wolf to resemble that of the dire wolf. For example, they modified the wolf’s fur color to white, olfactory systems and size. This was the process for de-extincting the dire wolf according to Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences.
For many people in the media, the idea of resurrecting extinct species has always captured public fascination. This is exemplified in pop culture with the Jurassic Park franchise and the multiple dinosaur or Ice Age related documentaries on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), National geographic and the British Broadcasting Channel (BBC).
Woodbridge High sophomore Gabriel Medina is also fascinated with the prospect of possible de-extinction.
“I was really amazed that this early we figured out a way to bring them back,” Medina said. “And I was kind of excited.”
Colossal making such a bold statement as to claim to have brought back the dire wolves has attracted lots of attention and promptly subjugated Colossal’s methods to further scrutiny by the scientific community. Many are skeptical about the authenticity of such de-extinction. Colossal argues that because only 14 out of the over 20,000 genes have been edited from the grey wolf, 99.93% of the animal is overwhelming grey wolf. To add, Colossal never synthesized a real dire wolf embryo, resulting in many believing their wolf to be more of a proxy dire wolf.
Chemistry teacher Jennifer Blackie is part of the majority of people who believe in this argument.
“They’re gray wolves with a few traits of dire wolves edited in…it’s not authentic to call them dire wolves or say that they brought back the dire wolf,” Blackie said.
Online, it is almost unanimously agreed upon, except by Colossal themselves, that editing traits of an existing animal to mimic that of a pre-existing one does not make them identical in the slightest. This is why Colossal has focused more on generating media hype around their creation in order to sweep the overdelivery of their promises under the rug.
“I think it’s good to get the hype, but I mean, I think it kind of takes a little bit away from the purpose of bringing back the dire wolves,” Medina said.
Indeed, Colossal featured their animals in the April 12 Time Magazine and emphasized the names of these dire wolves being the same as the fictional dire wolves in the show Games of Thrones with Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi. Whilst publishing scientific discoveries allows for the public to be involved and for projects to sustain adequate funding, it is important to many that intentions remain honest and transparent.
“Well, there’s nothing inherently wrong with publicizing your scientific work in a way that catches the attention of the general public. The general public doesn’t pay enough attention to science and so things that catch their attention are generally good—but you’ve got to do that without lying or misleading people about what you did,” Blackie said.
Colossal’s meddling has also brought ethical concerns to the public about de-extinct animals. Due to the changes in environment, these proxy dire wolves cannot be reintroduced into the environment as the aforementioned megafauna that sustained them have long been extinct. This leaves them to be experimented on and overseen by humans, which has brought the already existing debate of conservation to the table.
More importantly, Colossal has not mentioned the possibility of the proxy dire wolves having unintentionally harmful genetic mutations as a result of the gene splicing and editing. Although grey wolves are the dire wolves closest living relative, they don’t have the same skull size, broad forearms and muscle density as the dire wolf, which could cause harmful health issues to the proxy dire wolves. Blackie shares a comparison between the deliberate artificial selection humans have on dog breeds and the gene editing of proxy dire wolves.
“So you have a lot of dogs that are bred to be show dogs or something, and they are living miserable lives where they struggle to breathe, they struggle to walk and they break their legs at young ages…when you’re genetically editing an organism…you never know all the effects that those genes are going to have, it’s quite possible that these dire wolves that they made are going to have health problems and be in pain and suffering,” Blackie said.
Currently, the de-extinction of these animals provide a better understanding of DNA and ecology at the cost of these proxy dire wolves living in captivity and possibly in pain.
