A trio of genetically-engineered “dire wolves” have “doubled in size” over only a few months, the company behind the achievement says. Dire wolves went extinct some 10,000 years ago, but a team of scientists have attempted to recreate the species using gene editing.
American firm Colossal Biosciences claims to have have brought the ancient creatures, made famous for appearing in Game of Thrones, back from extinction, with two pups born in October and one in January. The company said it was done through “deft genetic engineering and ancient DNA”. A video the company shared on YouTube last month indicated that only months-old pups have grown considerably, as scientists wait to see whether they grow to be as large as the original Ice Age predators, which were about 20% larger than modern grey wolves.
The clip shows the creatures scampering around in a grassy enclosure, as the team of scientists who bred and are raising them provided updates on their development.
Matt James, chief animal officer at Colossal, said the two oldest of the three, Romulus and Remus, are slightly more than six months old and weigh “a little more than 90 pounds, which is about 20% larger than a standard grey wolf”.
“So we can really tell that the dire wolf genes are kicking in, and we’re getting these nice, large wolves that are much more representative of what we saw in the ancient specimens,” he continued.
“Khaleesi is a little smaller, a little younger. She’s a female, so she’s a little more petite today, she weighs about 35 pounds. But she’s still tracking about 10 or 15% larger than what we’ve seen in grey wolves.”
The younger wolf is being kept away from the other two until the team have “really strong indicators” that the animals are “socially compatible” to ensure her safety, with plans to gradually introduce Khaleesi to them in stages.
Colossal, which also has plans to adapt modern elephant DNA to recreate the whooly mammoth and other long-gone animals claims to have “successfully restored a once-eradicated species through the science of de-extinction”.
But Nic Rawlence, an associate professor and director of the Otago Paleogentics Laboratory at the University of Otago, says truly de-extincting an animal would require cloning.
“The problem is we can’t clone extinct animals because the DNA is not well enough preserved,” he told The Daily Mail.
The three wolves were created by taking ancient DNA from fossils, with scientists then looking at the genetics of the modern grey wolf to indentify differences.
They then altered grey wolf DNA to recreate traits found in the dire wolf, and implanted it into a surrogate mother to produce the creatures.
Colossal CEO Ben Lamm previously said: “I think that we have a moral obligation and an ethical obligation to pursue technologies [that] undo some of the things that we [as a species] have done.”