Startups hope to use gene-editing technology to create mammoth hybrids by 2027

A company called Colorsal is preparing to use CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing technology, to get the mammoth back from extinction by 2027. The plan is not to completely recreate the true mammoths, but to adapt them to cold genetic traits such as small ears and more body fat brought to their elephant cousins, creating a hybrid of elephants and mammoths.

Colossal says its goal is to successfully recover the mammoth and rewire it into a hybrid population in the Arctic. It is estimated to have its first populations in the next four to six years. Colossal hopes that its work will draw attention to biodiversity issues and ultimately help solve them. So far, Colossal has raised $15 million. The startup, which has 19 employees working at its Dallas headquarters and offices in Boston and Austin, Texas, is using its funds to hire more employees.

Colossal also wants to develop an artificial uterus to grow mammoth embryos. Raising 10 mammoths from surrogate elephant mothers alone is not enough to reach the massive population envisioned by the company. The basis of Colossal's work is CRISPR. Adapted from the way bacteria recognize aggressive viruses and shred their DNA, the technique is now the mainstream technique for genetic engineering.

Colossal's more direct profitable option is to sell tickets to tourists. After all, humans have spent a lot of money on African safaris to see charismatic megafauna such as lions, elephants and giraffes. Seeing a creature that has disappeared for ten thousand years can increase people's excitement. But this is not Colossal's game plan. Colossal said its focus is on species conservation and biodiversity conservation, rather than putting them in zoos. By recreating the mammoth, Colossal can protect the genetics of the now endangered Asian elephant.

While Colossal doesn't plan to build a tourist destination, it does have a mammoth rewilding base that sounds very close to Jurassic Park — Pleistocene Park, an area about 60 square miles north of Russia named after the geological period that ended with the last ice age, where researchers Sergey and Nikita-Zimov are trying to test their theories about the ecological and climatic effects of rewilding.

One idea of Nikita-Zimov was that the mammoth would trample on the snow and knock down the trees. This, in turn, will restore grasslands, reflect more of the sun's rays, and eliminate snow, meaning the ground will remain frozen rather than releasing its current storage of carbon dioxide and methane greenhouse gases. Scientists calculate that by 2300, about 260 billion to 300 billion metric tons of carbon could be released from thawed permafrost, exacerbating extreme weather and other problems caused by climate change.