Now they’re trying to create “woolly mice” on the road to the woolly mammoth

Matthew Cobb and I have repeatedly criticized the efforts of geneticist George Church and his colleagues to “bring back the extinct woolly mammoth,” because in fact all they intend to do is insert a few genes for stuff like hair into the elephant genome, creating a hairy elephant rather than resurrecting an extinct species (see … Continue reading Now they’re trying to create “woolly mice” on the road to the woolly mammoth

Mar 5, 2025 - 20:53

Now they’re trying to create “woolly mice” on the road to the woolly mammoth

Matthew Cobb and I have repeatedly criticized the efforts of geneticist George Church and his colleagues to “bring back the extinct woolly mammoth,” because in fact all they intend to do is insert a few genes for stuff like hair into the elephant genome, creating a hairy elephant rather than resurrecting an extinct species (see our posts here and especially the one here). The problems are greater than just the duplicity involved in saying that a few inserted genes can re-create an extinct species: they also involve how to put those genes into an Asian elephant egg, and create a womb that will nurture the modified egg and keep the fetus alive. Not to mention that if you want to keep this bogus “species” going, you have to produce at least one male and one female.

The Guardian has given new life to this fiction by saying that the creation of “woolly mice” who carry inserted genes giving them longer and newly-colored hair is the first step to creating the woolly mammoth. The article even even has the temerity to describe the woolly mice as a “new species”, which under any reasonable species definition is sheer nonsense. It’s a long way from putting extra hair on a mouse to putting extra hair on an elephant, even if that extra hair somehow supports the crazy idea that “we’ve re-created the mammoth!”

Read this mishigas by clicking on the headline:

An excerpt. The bolding is mine:

A plan to revive the mammoth is on track, scientists have said after creating a new species: the woolly mouse.
Scientists at the US biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences plan to “de-extinct” the prehistoric pachyderms by genetically modifying Asian elephants to give them woolly mammoth traits. They hope the first calf will be born by the end of 2028.
Ben Lamm, co-founder and chief executive of Colossal, said the team had been studying ancient mammoth genomes and comparing them with those of Asian elephants to understand how they differ and had already begun genome-editing cells of the latter.
Now the team say they have fresh support for their approach after creating healthy, genetically modified mice that have traits geared towards cold tolerance, including woolly hair. “It does not accelerate anything but it’s a massive validating point,” Lamm said.

In the research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, the team used a number of genome editing techniques to either genetically modify fertilised mouse eggs or modify embryonic mouse stem cells and inject them into mouse embryos, before implanting them into surrogates.
The team focused on disrupting nine genes associated with hair colour, texture, length or pattern or hair follicles. Most of these genes were selected because they were already known to influence the coats of mice, with the induced disruptions expected to produce physical traits similar to those seen in mammoths, such as golden hair.
However, two of the genes targeted in the mice were also found in mammoths, where they are thought to have contributed to a woolly coat, with the changes introduced by the researchers designed to make the mouse genes more mammoth-like.
The team also disrupted a gene associated with the way fats are metabolised in mice and was also found in mammoths, which they suggest could play a role in cold adaptation.

Note that they don’t know if the gene is associated with cold tolerance, and they changed only nine genes involved with hair. There are probably thousands of genes that differentiate the Asiatic elephant from the extinct mammoth.

As you see above, yes, they got furry mice, which of course are NOT a new species as they can interbreed with house mice.

Why don’t these people have the simple realization that:

a.) You don’t recreate an ancient species by making a modern one that somewhat resembles the extinct one but doesn’t near have the genetic differences that separate them. (What about behavior, for crying out loud?)
b.) You can’t genetically manipulate elephants the way you genetically manipulate mice.
c.) You have to create a lineage of breeding hairy elephants so the “revived species” will perpetuate itself.

But there’s at least one sane person who’s quoted:

Dr Tori Herridge of the University of Sheffield, said: “Engineering a mammoth-like elephant presents a far greater challenge: the actual number of genes likely to be involved is far higher, the genes are less well understood – and still need to be identified – and the surrogate will be an animal that is not normally experimented upon.”
And while some said the goal of reviving the mammoth had drawn closer, others were more sceptical. “Mammoth de-extinction doesn’t seem to be on the horizon anytime soon,” said Herridge.

I suspect Church will be dead before they even get close to their mammoth goal. If I were in charge, I’d simply give up this tedious and worthless project.

Here’s a reconstruction of the real ancient wooly mammoth from Wikipedia. How are they gonna make those long, curved tusks?