Some Scientists Want To Resurrect Extinct Species – Is It Even Possible?

0:00And now a word from our sponsor, South by Southwest London. Imagine a future where things just make sense. In the 1700s, we had canals. In the 1800s, the railways. Then telecom, fibre optic. And now? In a world that's more unsure than ever before, we need the answers. South by Southwest London presents over 900 speakers, 200 music artists, and 100 films in one location in June. To find out how they merge together and shape the future in person, visit southbysouthwestlondon.com. That's s-x-s-w-london.com. Imagine a world where herds of woolly mammoths roam the Arctic tundra, dodos thrive on the beaches of Mauritius, dire wolves howl in the wilderness of North America.

0:44That's the dream of de-extinction, bringing extinct species back to life through genetic engineering. Now, I hope you've got a good picture in your head of that, because that's where it's going to stay. That world is sadly unlikely to come back. From New Scientist, this is the world, the universe and us. I'm Dr Rowan Hooper. To discuss de-extinction, I'm joined by reporter Michael LaPage and paleontologist Victoria Herridge from the University of Sheffield. Welcome both. Thank you. Michael, the topic's in the news again, because one of the big biotech companies in this area, Colossal Biosciences, say they've made the eggshell of a moa, an artificial eggshell.

1:22that's the giant extinct bird from flightless bird from new zealand uh take us through what they've done yeah so well they're actually claiming they've developed an artificial egg but it's really just the eggshell uh so obviously if you want to make a mower these had really big eggs i mean we're talking sort of i think 38 centimeters by 18 centimeters that's pretty damn huge bigger than any living bird so you do need an artificial eggshell if you're going to try and make that but there are lots of other problems and also I was chatting to Tori before I wrote the story and she pointed out people have actually done this with cling film you can actually take a chicken egg out of its shell and raise it up in cling film yeah I mean I think the people who did that would agree that it wasn't perfect and there's lots of improvement to be made so it's one of those I'm a mammoth paleontologist I'm not a chicken evo devo expert I'm not somebody who is familiar in detail with the process here but you know i got sent the press release for this announcement as it often happens by journalists and i like to do a bit of background reading due diligence before i think can i comment on this because it's not really my it's not my area and i mostly say no i can't i can say something about the extinction but you do get to go down rabbit holes and one of the rabbit holes i went down was to find out you know what has happened in the development of artificial eggshells if you like or what you might call ex-ovo outside the egg development which is what this is since it was first sort of cooked up in like the earliest was the 70s and 80s and i found this guy bruce dunn who's an emeritus professor in america and he as a high school student did some of the early earliest development of x ovo technology right with a kind of literally like a styrofoam coffee cup type situation yeah three years ago 2023 he published a paper on adding calcium he's still going adding calcium to x over development to improve it using what he described as kitchen plastic wrap like this yeah yeah exactly so cling film so what so what you do is take a fertilized egg chicken's egg developing embryo and then pick off the shell and wrap it rewrap it in cling film or well what you need to do yeah so okay so think about it so cool so think about bruce's you know procedure he starts off with a you know in the 70s with a styrofoam coffee cup like that because you need a cup you need something to put all the gloop into if you've cracked an egg if you crack an egg so you can just crack it well i don't know i don't know how you start the process but if you do crack an egg you know you've got basically something which is very sloppy and slimy you have the egg white the albumen and the egg yolk in the middle and all of that is what you need to develop into a healthy chick eventually right what the egg does is it protects it around the outside and it modulates the amount of water vapor that goes in and the gaseous exchange also through that eggshell so if you want to look at how say a chick is developing for biological reasons or you know because you want to tinker with things because you want to improve husbandry in egg laying or something like that then you kind of want to watch the embryo develop right and to be able to manipulate it yeah and so to do that with an eggshell is really difficult so to remove the eggshell and to be able to observe the embryo growing in that sense you need to get it out of the egg and you need to have something else that holds that gloop so it can continue to develop and so it needs to be something which you can hold it cup shaped egg shape maybe cup shape and it needs to have some kind of membrane yeah an egg cup bigger because you know you can sort of that because you want it splitting over the edge um and so if you look at this last paper by bruce dunn with his uh cling film approach he literally had a plastic egg and he formed the cling from over it and then he suspended that within a cup and then you know and basically use it as a kind of pouch in which things develop now what it looks to me that colossal have done is a 3d printed the cup bit so it's a lattice it's got air pores so you can get air moving in and out right and then they've also created a membrane which we don't know what the technical details of that are but a membrane that i guess will be the equivalent of the cling film yeah in this sense so the claim i mean the claim is that this membrane is better at letting sort of uh oxygen through and things but i know there are teams in japan that say oh we've done just as well so uh in any case you need more than just a big shell or a big vessel.

5:26I think it's really important to say this. It's not artificial egg. People get to say it's an artificial egg. And I think you do that, you imagine they've created an egg. But this is what it is, is a cup with a membrane in it. And that could work. And I guess that's why it could be scalable. But this isn't actually creating an artificial egg. It's creating a laboratory environment in which you can grow chicks, study them, manipulate them, and maybe hatch them. And that's fine for a chick a chicken chick but if you're doing something big like a mower then you run into other problems right yeah so you think i was talking about the size of a mower egg there's a lot more egg white uh there's a lot more yolk now i thought the egg white might be a really important ingredient but i'm was told by ben novak an expert in the u.s uh that apparently they've managed to raise chickens in turkey egg white it looks like the egg white is probably fairly easy obviously the egg yolk that's a single giant cell yeah yeah i was amazed by that um fact in the in your story that i guess i never thought but a yolk is a single cell massive yeah so ostrich eggs biggest single cell on the planet wow but anyway so you would need to put a lot of yolks together and obviously if you try to inject more yolk into an existing yolk or burst open i think they're talking about trying to fuse them in some way but i mean it's probably doable but they haven't done it yet the issue with all these things is it's basically one big experiment right so i mean that's why it's interesting that's why you when you get into the looking to the details of it it becomes fascinating because you start to you know it basically asks you to unpick the the nature of what it is to become you know to grow which is why development is one of the most fascinating areas of biology but ultimately yeah you know it's an unknown right so these are experiments that are being done so yeah i mean i don't doubt there's lots of ideas of what you can do about it but i think it's really important not to underplay how difficult it may be and how many failures there may be along the way so the chicken turkey things as an example but you know that's there's a whole diversity of birds out there and there are really there's a really paper that i found that looked at the proteomes of different um species of bird and there are differences in you know the proteomes of you know say a quail versus a chicken and a pigeon pigeon which is important for dodos seem to be out there a bit as well and and you know that protein in that you know the egg white the bit that in your diet you think i'm going to up the protein i'll put some egg whites in it yeah that's feeding the growing bird and there may be signals in that it looks from the proteome that are important developmental signals that also tell that bird how to develop and so we shall see whether the egg white is an issue or not it's a question it's it's experimental it's not a done deal i think underplaying that is you know is problematic And colossal haven't even revealed how successful this is.

8:11They haven't been counting their chickens after they've hatched, as it were. The other big thing to say, of course, creating an egg, even if they can do that, that doesn't solve the big problems with de-extinction. So you've still got to sort of get that genome of the extinct mower. There are two large species of extinct mower. We're not going to get a complete genome because they weren't extinct too long ago. And then, you know, trying to engineer that into an egg. I mean, birds are much more difficult to genetically engineer than mammals. And they didn't do very much with the grey wolves they call in dire wolves.

8:45It's going to be even harder with any kind of bird. So let's get on to that a bit because they've redefined what they call de-extinction. It's not the traditional way that people might think of literally bringing a species back exactly as it was in the past from extinction. Their definition, Colossal's definition, is the process of generating an organism that both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species by resurrecting its lost lineage of core genes, engineering natural resistances, and enhancing adaptability that will allow it to thrive in today's environment of climate change, dwindling resources, disease, and human interference.

9:23So the idea, all of that is to say that they want to bring something back that's functionally equivalent to the extinct animal, which I always think, why not just use something that already exists that is functionally equivalent? I mean, that's definitely the approach, say for rewilding so for example in the uk um we never had european bison in the uk but there's now various schemes afoot in different places to place european bison in environments as a proxy for the aurochs right so we should probably just say the aurochs was a giant species giant uh sort of cattle species yeah the ancestor of the cow yeah exactly yeah so and it's an extinct ancient bovid ancient cow so that would be a kind of functional rewilding or you know so in that sense you If you want to create an ecological downstream impact, then you might look for the closest functional relative or at least functionally similar species that would fit that niche.

10:18And there's quite a lot of work discussing this. But again, we're in that kind of experimental stage of does it work? Because I think that's a whole separate issue. But it's really interesting because we've never had the European bison in the UK. It's never, ever been on these shores. And yes, it's sort of talked about as a kind of rewilding, bringing back, restoring. It's actually creating something new, potentially. but something which could be functionally useful. And I think that gets to the core of these questions of what is it we're actually trying to do. Well, I wanted to ask you in particular about mammoths about this because let's set aside the scaling problem that you mentioned with the bird eggs.

10:53But just imagine we can make up some sort of mammoth and we might want to get into that in a minute. But you'd need a lot of them, right, to recreate the role that mammoths played in the past on the tundra. and the thing I get stuck on is that Colossal say they want to make restored mammoths to restore the Arctic but and what they say on the site is these animals were key to protecting an ecosystem so vast it affected if not almost controlled the climate but that was in pre-industrial times global warming was not a thing then. I would also say like TBC as well I mean it's like I mean there's discussion to have about that too but yeah.

11:32Well even if we could like grow these millions of mammoths, release them into Siberia, would that help stabilise the climate, which, you know, it's warming six to 12 times faster than the global average? I'm going to say no. I mean, the claim here is that, so, you know, we've got permafrost ground, frozen ground warming up during the summers and then in winter it snows and you have this layer of snow sitting on top of it that's insulating it. And so the claim is if you had lots of mammoths running around and flattening that snow that gets rid of the insulation and then the permafrost the frozen ground cools down water in winters but you think about the amount of snow you have to flatten to have any kind of significant effect i mean the scale of what you require i mean you know just to create one sort of turn one asian elephant into something mammoth like is going to be this huge effort and then to breed millions i mean it's just they're not the fastest of breeders by the time it happens you know is is there going many permaphrods left in Siberia?

12:31Well, quite. I mean, exactly. So, I mean, as you look at the sort of numbers, it's like something like over 7 million square kilometres of permafrost in Siberia. Estimates vary. And if you look at paleo estimates by Zimov, who is the owner of Pleistocene Park and is interested in this, he went for like about one mammoth per square kilometre based on his estimates from fossils. So, if you want to do the whole permafrost region, that's quite a lot of mammoths. But you could argue you could do a subset of it and that would make a big difference. But I mean, we don't know the numbers, right? So, but I mean, the thing is even engaging in this, I think is just, it just becomes like, it shows you how powerful the draw of it is.

13:10Because we spend all our time discussing, is it possible? Is it wonderful? Is it great? And it's so alluring, right? So alluring and the nitty gritty bit's really, really dull. And so actually people aren't necessarily interested in like bridging the two gaps. And that's why it's such a powerful and attractive idea that, you know, the kind of the impossible, almost the impossibility of it always what's attractive about it. But ultimately, we seem to be on track for more than a plus three degree world. That's whacking us back into the Pliocene in terms of paleoclimate-wise, when there wasn't really very much of any permafrost in the northern hemisphere.

13:43That's one of the key defining aspects of our current geological period, the quaternary, is permanent ice in the north, permafrost in places, is what defines us. Now, if you go to three plus degrees, you're in a world where that wasn't there anyway. Now, what that world will be like is really, really interesting. It was certainly pretty good for elephants. Whether or not it's good for humanity, all 8 billion plus of us, is a different question. Most of us worry about memory lapses as we age. But how do you know when it's something more serious? You can explore this question in our latest New Scientist CoLab feature, where Dr Tim Beanland separates dementia myths from scientific facts.

14:26He discusses the breakthrough drugs showing promise in slowing Alzheimer's, the potential for simple, finger-prick diagnostic tests, and the incredible finding that nearly half the dementia cases globally could be prevented through lifestyle changes. It's a road map for brain health, and you can't afford to miss it. Search Dementia Everything You Need to Know at newscientist.com or visit alzheimers.org.uk. This message was sponsored by the Alzheimer's Society. so you know colossal acknowledge that the problems that we face are habitat destruction and you know the climate crisis pollution those things that are driving species extinct and they say you know they are human caused we've got to change our ways but they say that de-extinction is vital to that and another thing that well how interesting is this that they say they as well as these claims they're making about, you know, thylacine, dodos, mammoths, that they say they want to manipulate extant organisms, organisms that aren't extinct, in ways to promote, sustain and enhance life forms that contribute to climate change reversal, carbon and methane sequestration, plastic degradation and so on.

15:38How feasible is that? So bio-geoengineering. Yeah, I mean, just helping, giving these species a helping hand that are struggling, technologically, genetically giving them a boost, I mean, likely is one question. Right? Do something we want to do? Another question. I think these things are. So one of my biggest issues, I think, with this whole debate is that the possibility is so immense, it's practically impossible to pin any one thing down. Right? It becomes very movable and slippery to talk about. But one thing I think is absolutely true, regardless of where you come in and at, is that these are all questions that relate to the kind of world we want to have.

16:17And they all relate to questions about technology and who makes decisions. And one of the most important things, I think, is that those decisions are made by the public in collaboration with the people who have to live in that world. And the interesting thing here, I think, is that when you put these things off into a private company, those decisions get made without that discussion happening. And they are presented as a fait accompli. Right. And that, to me, is problematic. So one of the things I wrote when I first said I wasn't going to join the Colossal Advisory Board was that if you're going to do it, you should ask the public.

16:51And I stand by that. So particularly if you take people at their own words, their own lines, which is what, you know, they say they want to do this because they want to create organisms that will effectively mitigate the climate crisis by affecting the way our climate and our geological system, our earth system works. Then you are in the realms of global geoengineering. It may not be possible. It may be a completely ludicrous claim. But if that's what you say you're going to do, my goodness, you should be asking people about it rather than just going ahead and doing it. Yeah. And just picking up on that, I mean, what Colossal's effectively saying and wants to do is release lots of genetically engineered organisms out into the wild.

17:30Now, you talk about de-extinction, everyone goes, oh, that's great. If you talk about releasing lots of genetically engineered organisms, oh, that's terrible, we can't do that. But it's just the whole, when you use the word de-extinction, And suddenly it seems like it's acceptable to people when if you framed it differently, it wouldn't be. So that perception is very important, I think. Isn't that interesting, though? And it is all about the power of the story. And people talk a lot about stories being very important in a positive way. But I think we should all remember that the power of a story is it doesn't matter whether what you're telling is true or not.

18:02It still is very, very powerful. And I think you can see that in the way that the two descriptions of the same thing can land very differently. but people are desperate for this my whole career i've been sent press releases about mammoths coming back literally from over 25 years ago always five years away now it's only two so but but there's an un there is a huge desire amongst the public it's thrilling for them it's absolutely thrilling can't we have both can't we uh you know actually try and fix the problem at the core which is fossil fuel overuse and all of those things we know about and then have this fun stuff as well do you want it though i mean i think this is it i mean why i so i think that's problematic right it's this fun stuff there right but actually what you're talking about is experimentation on animals and so you know how much and an orphaned species well yeah just just the practicality of it all you you know to get a to get a woolly mammoth or a facsimile of a woolly mammoth you need to impregnate an asian or african elephant and you need to do it with untested procedures with genes you aren't entirely sure are going to create the phenotype you you think it's going to do.

19:09And, you know, we also know from just basic elephant husbandry and captive situations that that is not a zero risk situation. So is it legitimate to go down that route just because it's fun? And because someone thinks, oh, that'd be cool. I'd like to go see a woolly mammoth. I mean, there are reasons why we have these kind of ethical checks and balances on animal experimentation. I mean, that to me, and there has to be a really, really, really high bar for experimenting on elephants. So Michael, with the direwolf, we've reported this before, you know, Colossal say they've restored this once eradicated species.

19:46How many genes did they actually make into changing the wolf? There were 20 gene edits of which only 15 were actually based on the direwolf genome. To put that in context, there are probably millions, if not billions of differences between grey wolves, which are the ones who are edited and cloned and direwolf so you've got so 20 changes so they've got these millions required you've got these direwolf basically wolf pups that have been tinkered with what's happened to the pups oh they are on a sort of uh enclosed i think it's a 200 acre reserve somewhere in somewhere in the us and their periodic reports saying they're thriving and growing so the welfare isn't such an issue perhaps for them because they are living with their or were living with their wolf mother and then they're off roaming and they're not so different that they can't just go off and live like wolves.

20:33Yeah, of course, remember these are clone wolves, so there might have been some issues with implanting them in the mothers in the first place. We don't have any of the details of that. I think one of the things is that, you know, the great thing about a successful experiment, if it goes well, is that's great, but what if it hadn't gone well? And I think that's a really interesting thing. So if you only get reporting at the end and you've decided anything but you take those decisions before you know what the outcome is right so and and i think and it's really interesting to think about this in terms of how you perceive risk i suppose and if it's all well that ends well great but what if it wasn't like you know how then would that play out would we even have heard about it i don't know we just don't know right but i mean but it doesn't it shouldn't matter you should be talking about that you shouldn't be doing these i don't i personally don't think i really don't think it is justifiable to do experimentation, even if it's successful, on an animal like a dog or a wolf for something which effectively was a PR stunt.

21:33They were never intending to be released. Never. I mean, I actually cannot believe it. I just like my jaw just drops. And I think, am I just, I must be so out of sync with everybody. That's what I just feel like. I feel like sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy. I was like, really? That's okay? Is there any kind of de-extinction that you would agree with? For instance, I mentioned Ben Novak earlier, who's trying to recreate or trying to modify the band-tailed pigeon to make it more like the passenger pigeon. But it's clear that this would be a hybrid rather than the actual passenger pigeon itself.

22:05I don't disagree with de-extinction. That's the thing. I mean, I have two very separate things. I think it's interesting. And I think you have to have all these ethical discussions along the way. So I would have exactly that same check and balance thing. Like, you know, what is the likelihood of success? What is the risk of the experimental organisms along the way? and what is the reason for doing it and what is the benefit of doing it, both for biodiversity or for humanity, right? And so you'd weigh those up individually. So, for example, you could make that case for the thylacine, yeah? What I do object to is taking that kind of basic premise, okay, this is something I think is quite interesting, and then not really talking, the word honest is wrong, but maybe not really being fully open with what is actually happening.

22:50And so I find it frustrating that we have these press releases that don't have the relevant detail in them for us to actually be able to assess those things. So that's the issue. And it feels like being the world's biggest party pooper, but it's a bit like you can't just go out there and say you've created a direwolf when you haven't created a direwolf. That's just not true. Or if you really think it's true, that is all we have to go on. That's what you think a direwolf is? My goodness. Okay, we'll take you at your word and you actually really, really genuinely believe that you have recreated a direwolf based on 20 gene edits.

23:31That's what you think bringing back a new species is. I mean, for me, how on earth can we trust somebody who says that to do a good job on the other species, right? If they genuinely believe that is sufficient. and that's all we have to go on and that's where it gets problematic for me, right? We talk about the generality of de-extinction and that's really interesting and has maybe potential possibilities and then we talk about the specifics of individual cases and they fall short. Yeah, there's this huge disconnect between what people think of as de-extinction which is this Jurassic Park inspired idea of it's the original animal.

24:06And that didn't go well either, did it? Well, no. But what Colossal is doing is creating this kind of simulacrum of an extinct animal. It's tweaking a few genes to make something that looks a little bit like it, but isn't really it in any meaningful shape. I wish I could enjoy it more, to be honest, because actually lots of it is really funny. I really did actually laugh a lot when I saw Ben Lamb at this South by Southwest interview wearing an InGen t-shirt. I was like, I thought that's pretty funny. But, you know, so it's like that kind of, I wish I could enjoy it more, but actually it's quite serious in that sense.

24:38And there's so many other side aspects to it they've become quite serious in the way that the kind of attitude that's come out towards the scientists who've critiqued them this idea that people are just whingers who don't like it and are jealous when actually i mean all those things are undermining the hard work of so many and the and the kind of credibility of so many brilliant scientists because the majority of people who aren't paid for colossal tend to not agree with them and so it's kind of that whole whole vibe is just like it's it's it's unpleasant anyway but yeah yeah if you want to laugh watch the uh watch the video they've made to promote this sort of it is just ridiculous it's like this is the biggest thing ever and it's amazing we'll leave it there that i like that we're party poopers that's what we do that's our job that is our job new scientists um thanks to our guests victoria herridge michael le page that's all for this episode uh do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

25:33Bye for now.