It’s been 4,000 years since the woolly mammoth went extinct, but Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences wants to change that. In 2022, it announced it had sequenced the genome of the Asian elephant, which shares 99.6% of its genes with the woolly mammoth. Combining that with DNA samples from mammoth remains could mean a rebirth of the species. The company hopes to work its “de-extinction” magic on other species, including the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger, and threatened species could be saved from extinction by editing more diversity into their genomes, making them more robust.
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