A New Company Wants To Resurrect The Woolly Mammoth Using DNA Splicing - NPR

An artist's impression of a woolly mammoth in a snow-covered environment.

An artist's impression of a woolly mammoth in a snow-covered environment.

Using recovered DNA to "genetically resurrect" an extinct species — the central idea behind the Jurassic Park films — may be moving closer to reality with the creation this week of a new company that aims to bring back woolly mammoths thousands of years after the last of the giants disappeared from the Arctic tundra.

Flush with a $15 million infusion of funding, Harvard University genetics professor George Church, known for his pioneering work in genome sequencing and gene splicing, hopes the company, in the bold words of its news release, can usher in an era when mammoths "walk the Arctic tundra again." He and other researchers also hope that a revived species can play a role in combating climate change.

The body of Lyuba, a baby woolly mammoth who lived about 42,000 years ago on the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia, is exhibited in Hong Kong.

The body of Lyuba, a baby woolly mammoth who lived about 42,000 years ago on the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia, is exhibited in Hong Kong.

But even if the researchers at Colossal can bring back mammoths — and that is not certain — the obvious question is, should they.

Speaking with NPR in 2015, Beth Shapiro, a paleogeneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, said emphatically, "I don't want to see mammoths come back.".

"But what if we could use this technology not to bring back mammoths but to save elephants?".

Colossal's expressed aim of allowing woolly mammoths to "walk the Arctic tundra again" by the thousands also brings up another ethical concern: Although the extinction of the mammoth thousands of years ago left a gap in the ecosystem, that ecosystem has presumably now adapted, at least imperfectly, to their absence.

"The proposed 'de-extinction' of mammoths raises a massive ethical issue.