As part of its effort to engineer mammoth-like elephants, Colossal and its collaborators are working to find gene variants that contributed to key mammoth traits, such as shaggy hair, cold tolerance and extra fat stores. To do this, they compare genomes extracted from the remains of dozens of mammoths and from other living and extinct relatives of the creatures, in search of protein-altering changes that evolved on the mammoth lineage.
You’re right. I misunderstood it as copying the DNA from mammoths, when they were actually editing the mouse DNA to mirror the evolutionary changes that mammoths underwent.
They have some partial DNA that they’re using to try and recreate woolly mammoth-like creatures. That’s probably what mixed me up. Thanks for the correction!
Slice in some frog dna… what could go wrong
They’re already testing out wooly mammoth DNA in mice.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00684-1
Seems kind of cruel to bring back mammoths just as we’re in the process of cooking the planet.
That’s not the same as what you’re claiming.
You’re right. I misunderstood it as copying the DNA from mammoths, when they were actually editing the mouse DNA to mirror the evolutionary changes that mammoths underwent.
They have some partial DNA that they’re using to try and recreate woolly mammoth-like creatures. That’s probably what mixed me up. Thanks for the correction!
https://colossal.com/mammoth/