A company that intends to bring back the woolly mammoth has taken a small, but significant step toward its massive de-extinction goal: it has created a woolly mouse. The company, Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences, used a variety of gene-editing techniques to create a number of tiny rodents with the massive, extinct species’ bushy hair. They reported their results in bioRxiv.org.
Making the Woolly Mouse
Their gene editing efforts focused on two general traits — both of which are associated with cold-weather survival. One, the mammoth’s curly textured hair, is quite visible. The other — altering a mouse’s metabolism to store, not burn fats — is less so.
To identify what genes they might target to achieve those features, they first compared the mammoth genome to that of the Asian elephant — the mammoth’s closest surviving relative. Then they examined the genomes of many mouse models to identify the best spots in their genomes to alter.
A mouse is the most genetically scrutinized mammal; it has been edited to study the traits of countless genes, sometimes by knocking out or removing them, then observing what physical characteristic or phenotype results.
