Romulo, Remo and Khaleesi, the three wolf puppies created genetically by the Biotechnological company Colossal Bioscience, arouse the debate on the wishes of the terrible wolf, extinct species for more than 10,000 years.
The three specimens, which the company claims to have developed, are not true huargos wolves – extended 10,000 years ago – but genetically modified gray wolves with some genes of the giant wolf or Huargo.
The scientists made this clarification after Colossal last Monday announced that he had welcomed this species thanks to a complete genome of Lobo Huargo, rebuilt from ancient DNA extracted from fossils between 11,500 and 72,000 years.
Colossal said that he edited 20 gray wolves genes with that DNA ―Procedent of a tooth of 13,000 years and a 72,000 -year -old skull – to induce in the puppies some characteristics of the Huargos wolves.
Subsequently, the company created embryos from modified cells of the gray wolf and implemented these in bitches that gestated and gave birth to the puppies last October. Currently, the animals are in an ecological reserve certified by the American Human Society, whose location remains secret.
The Spanish paleogenetist Carles Lalueza-Fox, researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), is clear: one cannot speak of welcoming, but of genetically modified wolves-in concrete, 14 genes-he told the EFE agency.
“As the Huargo wolf genome has not been published, we do not know how many genes differentiate it from the gray wolf; but, attending to the time of divergence of both species (about four or five million years), they will be several thousand,” he explained. In the experiment, he pointed out, only genes were used in the external aspect.
“If we compare it with us and the Neanderthals, whose lineages were separated only a tenth of the time that the two types of wolf, we have 2% of their genes, but no one would say that we are Neanderthals. Much less in the case of the giant wolves,” Lalueza-Fox concluded.
For Lluís Montoliu, researcher at the National Biotechnology Center of Madrid, the conclusion is the same: Colossal has modified gray wolves using the Crispr-CA genetic editing technique and has obtained an animal “that looks like the giant wolf, but which is not. It does not have all its genome,” he also stressed to EFE.
In statements to the Media Center of New Zealand, the director of the Otago Paleogenetics Laboratory, Espic Rawlence, clarified that to welcome a species you have to clone it first, and the problem is that extinct animals cannot be cloned because its DNA is not well preserved enough.
“What Colossal Bioscience has produced is a gray wolf with similar characteristics to those of the giant wolf, but it is not a reintroduced giant wolf, but a hybrid,” said the paleogenetist.
For his part, Philip Seddon, of the Department of Zoology of the University of Otago and an expert in bioethics and de -sextization, pointed out that “Colossal Biosciences, the company of 10,000 million dollars that is behind the efforts to resurrect the Lanudo Mammut, the Marsupial Wolf and to the Dodo, has just announced what he describes as the wolf’s wolf He extinguished about 10,000 years ago. ”
But, although they talk about de -sexyt and amazing technological advances have been achieved, “the nice puppies are not giant wolves, but genetically modified gray wolves,” he said.
Technical and bioethical issues
For Montoliu, the main question has not yet been answered: “Why do you want to do this? Do we want to make a zoo of impossible creatures? This issue should worry, and I don’t see that it is being answered,” he warned.
The geneticist recalled that, according to Colossal and its founder, George Church, the objective of returning mammoths to nature is to combat climate change, piss the tundra, compact the terrain and prevent the release of greenhouse gases. “That can be more or less credible,” he added.
In this case, “I don’t think it’s to welcome the wolf,” he clarified to Efe.
However, Montoliu acknowledged that, from the technological point of view, Colossal is at the forefront of the use of Crispr-Cas9 tools and is able to edit hundreds, even thousands of genes at the same time, “which is not simple.” “They seem to have solved many of the problems of genetic multiedition, because their animals survive,” he said.
For Lalueza-Fox, if it is true that in Colossal they have managed to modify 20 genetic positions in 14 genes-although this announcement is not backed by a scientific publication-it would be a positive perspective, since “the techniques could be applied to modify endangered species and make them more resilient, for example, to climate change”.
Seddon also believes that colossal technological advances could have positive implications for the conservation of existing species, while Rawlence suggests that they should be used “to preserve what remains, not to resurrect extinct species.”
Lobo Huargo puppies are not the first colossal creation, which a month ago presented mice with mammoth hair, also obtained by genetic edition and generated the same controversies.