[HN Gopher] "Wooly mice" a test run for mammoth gene editing
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"Wooly mice" a test run for mammoth gene editing
Author : LorenDB
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-03-04 23:34 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Small discussion, including video (12 points, 10 hours ago, 2
| comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43254455
| zabzonk wrote:
| I'm not happy with all this stuff - I think it's cruel. Back in
| the early 70s the lab I worked in had a colony of mice called
| "wobblers" that in some sense modelled Parkinson's Disease - but
| not usefully, as far as I could see.
| boxed wrote:
| It's also cruel to eradicate entire species. At this point we
| can only choose between playing incompetent god or competent
| god. This work is the latter, and I'm here for it.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| In that dilemma we are definitely god, you merely debate the
| competency.
|
| Some folks thought to develop some semi-lethal virus in a lab
| in Wuhan because "we can/why not" and we know what happened
| next. Many of us have watched every Resident Evil movie or
| the 12 Monkeys.
|
| Steve Gibson keeps saying "what could possibly go wrong". Our
| (commoners'/plebes') fates have historically been determined
| by warmongers, "hawks", ruthless immoral people who play
| chess with real humans.
|
| I am not surprised that something will definitely happen. I
| will be surprised on the "when". I am semi-prepared for the
| morons to eliminate 90% of the world's population some way or
| another. I just hope that if/when that happens either "I go
| out" it will be quick and painless, or I will have the chance
| to 'activate my plan' and perhaps live a simple life in a
| forest away from the destruction.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There will be a lot of Dunning-Kruger phenomena involved.
|
| Biology is hard to understand, because it is not logical in
| the same way that maths is. Our bodies contain untold amounts
| of traces of ancient bottleneck events that are no longer
| relevant, but the adaptations are still with us.
| zabzonk wrote:
| No, I don't think it is cruel. For example, wolves were
| eradicated from what is now the UK in the Tudor ages. But it
| wasn't done with any particular cruelty (for the time), and
| just because they were eating sheep (wool was a huge industry
| back then).
| meowface wrote:
| I think it's acceptable if they have good reason to believe the
| gene editing isn't going to lead to a trait that harms the
| animal. I think fluffier fur isn't a big deal. And I say this
| as a vegetarian and a huge supporter of animal rights.
|
| Inducing Parkinsonian symptoms or removing limbs is very
| different from some cosmetic changes. Maybe they also need to
| be kept in cooler environments or something, but assuming they
| accommodate that, this doesn't seem cruel to me.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I dunno - the right-hand mouse doesn't look so healthy around
| the face.
|
| Just to be clear, I've killed quite a few mice in my time
| (traps, poison, cat) when they become nuisances. I'm not
| sentimental about them at all, but I do draw the line at
| actual cruelty.
| esperent wrote:
| To me, who has safely trapped a ton of mice (around 15 I
| think, over the last couple of years), and then driven way
| out into the nearest wild area and released them unharmed,
| using killing traps or poison _is_ cruel.
|
| I don't especially judge you for it. Well, maybe for the
| poison since that can get into the food chain. But I also
| don't think you have some kind of moral high ground
| compared to these researchers.
| quesera wrote:
| The survival chances of relocated mice are basically nil.
|
| You are deluding yourself to make yourself feel better.
|
| No judgement, I've done it too. But now we both know
| better.
| TylerE wrote:
| I mean, the average wild mouse lives a year or so, tops.
| Small rodents are not long lived.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Traps at least are not cruel - usually almost instant
| death by their neck being broken. Cats are natural
| predators. I don't much like using poison, but sometimes
| you have to.
|
| I have never claimed any high moral ground, just that the
| deaths I'm talking about are quick, rather than them (or
| any animal) being bred to suffer.
| ysofunny wrote:
| GATTACA here we come
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Can we have any genetics results without people unironically
| citing fiction as if it was history?
| ysofunny wrote:
| can we bury our minds further into the sand as if it was a
| good idea?
| metalman wrote:
| it would be interesting to see if any of the targeted gene
| insertions, are conserved across surviving polar mamals, musk
| oxen, elk, polar bears, foxes...,mice even perhaps marine mamals,
| and polar humans there are likely going to be multiple genetic
| pathways for each polar adaptations, not least of which will be
| enhanced low light vision and the (cognitive?,sensory?,smell?)
| ability to navigate in the dark. We are not talking about some
| kind of finch here,a mammoth is more extreemofilic mega fauna,
| and therein are likely the reasons for its extinction, so mammoth
| mkII will need to take that AND, modern climate/ecological
| conditions into consideration in order to project a plausible re-
| introduction.
| feverzsj wrote:
| So, they gonna edit elephant's gene to make it wooly, and call it
| a mammoth. It's like these chinese zoos dyeing dogs as lions and
| pandas.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I'd say it's like giving a sub-Saharan African a fur coat for
| the summertime.
|
| It's not looking like any creature on Earth is going to need
| _more_ hair for quite a few centuries, if not longer.
|
| Maybe my balding head will be a benefit after all :-)
| lukan wrote:
| Depends. If the gulf stream stops, europe will get
| considerably colder first and who knows for how long?
| smokeyfish wrote:
| Until the next...mice age.
| beloch wrote:
| "the plan is to take stem cells from a closely related species
| that has not gone extinct, and edit a series of changes based
| on the corresponding genomes of the deceased species. In the
| case of the mammoth, that means the elephant."
|
| My impression from previous info released by Colossal is that
| the plan is to take isolated fragments of mammoth DNA and put
| those back into elephants. They haven't been able to recover a
| full mammoth genome, but they've been able to recover many
| fragments that include cold adaptations, and long hair is just
| one of them. The result won't be a mammoth, but it would be
| part-way there and, perhaps, something that could actually live
| in the far North.
|
| They face a _lot_ of sticky challenges though. Last I read
| anything on their work, they were hoping to use artificial
| wombs rather than surrogate elephant mothers due to ethical
| concerns. Elephants often grieve for dead newborns, and
| genetically engineered mammoth-elephant hybrids are more likely
| to die shortly after birth than not. Bringing hybrids to term
| in elephant mothers would be inhumane. However, their website
| now mentions plans for using surrogate elephants. What 's going
| on there? A lot of this work also involves collaboration with
| Russia, which can't be easy right now, ethically or
| practically.
|
| The end goal is still laudable though. Restoring the mammoth
| steppe, if done in time, could help keep massive amounts of
| methane locked in permafrost, reducing the impact of global
| warming. It's a moon-shot, but not impossible.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I think the main obstacle is not the ethical one, but the
| very long gestation period of elephants (more than 18
| months). Mice, in contrast, have a gestation period of 20
| days. So each iteration of your experiment will take 20 times
| longer when you use elephants. A postdoc might be there for 2
| iterations, while a tenured professor could perform maybe 10
| iterations throughout their career.
| esperent wrote:
| It's really strange, and nice, to see a company thinking in
| the long term. I wish more companies would do it.
| Kuinox wrote:
| How mammoths would help with the permafrost ?
| n1b0m wrote:
| Permafrost is frozen ground that contains large amounts of
| greenhouse gases. When permafrost melts, microbes in the
| soil release methane and carbon dioxide. Woolly mammoths
| may have helped keep permafrost frozen by trampling shrubs
| and moss, and packing down snow. Grass absorbs less
| sunlight than trees, which keeps the ground cooler.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Bingo, Dino DNA!
| stoneman24 wrote:
| Sounds like a typical SV play. Try different concepts, get
| product market fit and scale up.
|
| I, for one, welcome our hairy, cancer-free, super-intelligent
| mammoth-mice overlords.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I prefer our grains in the mouths of human beings, not rodents.
|
| I've seen those crazy videos of mice breeding unchecked inside
| a granary. It's freaking scary. Imagine the fleas! No thank
| you.
|
| And now they've got better hair than me? Science is out of
| control! (j/k)
|
| TBF, the mice already have better hair than me, but that's
| beside the point.
| asddubs wrote:
| maybe we need to find the gene for mice pattern baldness to
| even the scales
| MrMcCall wrote:
| thanks for the legit lol, but my back and groin have dibs
| on that tech
|
| FUN FACT OF THE DAY: Listening to LOTR with my kids, I made
| a joke that "Gimli, son of Gloin" was really "Gimli, son of
| Gloin, son of Groin" (having no idea what Gloin's father's
| name was), and when my son read the full timeline at the
| end of LOTR, Gloin's father really was named Groin, so now,
| in my family, it's "Gimli, grandson of Groin". Enjoy!
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Interestingly if not suspiciously, this lab is CIA-funded as well
| as Thiel-funded. Thiel funded George Church directly before
| Colossal began.
|
| Related news:
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harvard-scientist-george-church...
|
| > Church was partly funded from 2005 to 2007 by the nonprofit
| Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation.
| unosama wrote:
| Completely unsurprising. This whole project seems so
| superfluous that it must be some intelligence-related thing for
| a wholly different purpose. Can you share how you know it is
| CIA funded?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| https://theintercept.com/2022/09/28/cia-extinction-woolly-
| ma...
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| This is very fascinating and a photogenic demonstration of what
| is possible via gene editing. My hope is that this research leads
| to cures of genetic diseases that have previously been incurable.
|
| I doubt the efficacy of creating mammoth like creatures, or
| elephants that have mammoth traits. We're talking about
| recreating an ice age creature that, ostensibly we hunted into
| extinction. But with climate change and a warming planet, even if
| we were successful in recreating mammoths, where would such a
| creature live? James Hansen, who testified to congress in 1988
| and informed the public about climate change, recently said that
| the Paris goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees Centigrade is
| pretty much dead. At 2 degrees we'll be seeing ice free arctics
| at-least once per decade. With that future, there's simply not
| going to be any habitat for these creatures to live in.
| netcan wrote:
| So... Mammoths _are_ elephants. Asian elephants are more
| closely related to mammoths than African elephants. They were
| likely genetically compatible. You could probably achieve a
| passable mammoth phenotype with selective breeding.
|
| Also, Proboscideans existed in many climate zones through
| various climactic periods. They're not narrow specialists.
|
| Mammoths just happen to capture the imagination, representing
| the ice age. Megafaunal extinction. Ancient hunters. Rewilding.
| Etc.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Of course they capture the imagination... I mean... imagine
| wooly mammoths roaming the boulevards of Paris... or having
| wings and perching on top on the Eiffel Tower... sadly no
| cure for cancer in sight.
| tomcam wrote:
| Not quite sure where you were going with this reply, but
| username fits
| jghn wrote:
| There's still an enormous number of edits they need to make.
| I don't remember the exact number they said but I believe it
| was in the several hundred to low thousands range. Meanwhile
| the rest of the world is mostly focusing on "an edit". It's
| not impossible, but it'll be quite an undertaking.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| https://pleistocenepark.ru/
| countWSS wrote:
| Lets also add the sabre-toothed genes and let it escape out of
| the lab.
| mnahkies wrote:
| Someone else mentioned sabre-tooth, I'd love for someone to
| figure out a way to revive the Moa - much more recently extinct,
| so maybe easier? (Though perhaps harder due to the climate being
| less amenable to preserving DNA)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa
| rapnie wrote:
| Too bad. Mammoths? Not possible and unethical, according to this
| geneticist's opinion piece in The Guardian.
|
| > The only way you will ever see a living mammoth is if our
| physicist friends finally crack time travel. I am a mere
| geneticist, but my understanding is that this remains very much
| in the realm of fiction. Perhaps in the meantime we could direct
| our scientific excitement and energies towards real problems,
| things on which millions of lives depend, rather than on this
| mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/woolly...
| vrosas wrote:
| The mammoth is their moonshot project. They're working on a
| number of species that have more complete genomes in the name
| of de-extinction.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Boy that geneticist must be fun at parties. Focus on my pet
| issues exactly like I do or else you are literally morally
| bankrupt! You can tell his mind has been throughly warped by
| academic knife fighting for grants.
| unosama wrote:
| It's disgusting how scientists come up with these elaborate
| excuses to do things they know everyone will object to. Stop
| playing god
| topaz0 wrote:
| The push here is much more from techno-utopian venture
| capitalist grifters than from scientists.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Much of the coverage of this story has credulously repeated the
| company's marketing press release without any sort of critical
| appraisal of the actual significance of the announcement (read:
| not much) or of the stated goal, which is misguided in the
| extreme. I found this (older) article about the "de-extinction"
| project [1] to be much more informative. The same journalist
| covered the new announcement last week [2] (submitted to hn here:
| [3]).
|
| [1]: https://defector.com/what-kind-of-future-does-de-
| extinction-...
|
| [2]: https://defector.com/do-not-be-bamboozled-by-the-new-
| fluffy-...
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302625
| ratatoskrt wrote:
| This is ridiculous. They started with the ambitious goal of
| cloning a mammoth, then scaled it down to making elephants
| slightly more mammoth-like, and now they've ended up doing a
| literature search on genes that make mice a bit furrier. At this
| point, they're just another biotech company... which would be
| fine if they were honest about it. Instead, they've come up with
| this completely unrealistic plan supposedly aimed at combating
| climate change. Don't be mistaken - anyone investing in this is
| doing so purely to profit from their intellectual property, not
| for any noble cause.
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