Company Trying to Resurrect a Mammoth Makes a Stem Cell Breakthrough – By Isaac Schultz (Gizmodo) / March 6, 2024
The ‘de-extinction’ company Colossal Biosciences has taken a step toward its hairy elephant—erm, mammoth.
Colossal Biosciences, which calls itself “the world’s first de-extinction company,” has created stem cells it thinks will hasten the company’s marquee goal of resurrecting the woolly mammoth. The team’s research describing the accomplishment will be hosted on the preprint server bioRxiv.
The cells are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), a type of cell that can be reprogrammed to develop into any other type of cell. The cells are especially useful in bioengineering, for their applications in cell development, therapy, and transferring genetic information across species. Colossal’s new iPSCs are the first engineered elephant cells converted into an embryonic state, a useful development if you’re in pursuit of a woolly mammoth. Or rather, an animal that looks like a woolly mammoth.
“In the past, a multitude of attempts to generate elephant iPSCs have not been fruitful. Elephants are a very special species and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of their fundamental biology,” said Eriona Hysolli, who heads up Colossal’s biological sciences team, in a statement. “The Colossal mammoth team persisted quite successfully as this progress is invaluable for the future of elephant assisted reproductive technologies as well as advanced cellular modeling of mammoth phenotypes.”
CONTINUE > https://gizmodo.com/colossal-biosciences-elephant-stem-cells-woolly-mammoth-1851312096
