Dire wolves, made famous by “Game of Thrones,” went extinct some 13,000 years ago. Now, researchers have bred gray-wolf pups that carry genes of their ancient cousins.
Two of the pups, Romulus and Remus, are named for the mythical founders of Rome, who were raised by a wolf. The third pup, Khaleesi, is named for a leading character in “Game of Thrones.”
What’s your reaction to the news? Is it cause for celebration — or concern? Would you like to see long-gone species like the woolly mammoth or the dodo return to our planet? Or do the dangers of playing God far exceed the benefits?
In “Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close,” Carl Zimmer writes about one company’s quest to bring animals back from extinction:
For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.”
In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.
The result is three healthy wolves — two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — that have some traits of dire wolves.
They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.
Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, described the wolf pups as the first successful case of de-extinction. “We’re creating these functional copies of something that used to be alive,” she said in an interview.
Mr. Zimmer discusses the path Colossal took to achieve its goal of de-extinction:
Over the years, scientists have proposed various ways of reviving a lost species. Suppose, for instance, that they recovered an intact cell from the frozen carcass of a woolly mammoth. Perhaps the cell could be thawed and used to create a mammoth clone.
The entrepreneurs and scientists who started Colossal in 2021 took a different path. They would analyze ancient DNA to identify the key mutations that made extinct species distinct from living relatives. The researchers would then engineer the DNA of a living relative and use those genes to produce viable animals. The revived animals would not be genetically identical to the extinct species, but they would be identical in crucial ways.
Colossal initiated high-profile experiments on woolly mammoths and the dodo, a flightless bird that went extinct three centuries ago. Then the challenges emerged.
For one, while it is relatively easy to make a single edit to the DNA of an animal, the scientists hoped to make dozens of edits. Then there was the matter of producing animals from the edited DNA. The researchers at Colossal envisioned growing mammoth fetuses in Asian elephant surrogate mothers, but no one had ever carried out in vitro fertilization with elephants. To resurrect a dodo, they would somehow have to maneuver a modified bird embryo into a hard-shelled egg.
In 2023, the Colossal team began to focus on dire wolves as a potentially easier target species. Dire wolves are related to dogs, so scientists could take advantage of years of research on cloning dogs and implanting dog embryos.
“We’ve done a lot of work on dogs, because people love everyone’s favorite domesticated gray wolf,” Dr. Shapiro said.
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
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Should we bring back animals from extinction? Why or why not? What do you see as the possible benefits and dangers?
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If you answered yes, what animals would you like to see revived? The mythical dodo? The famed saber-toothed tiger? Or even a Tyrannosaurus rex?
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What is your reaction to the article? Are you excited by the news that scientists have bred animals that carry genes of a species that went extinct 13,000 years ago? Why or why not? Do you think we should applaud Colossal’s efforts at “de-extinction”? Or fear them?
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Dr. Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, described the wolf pups as the first successful case of de-extinction, saying, “We’re creating these functional copies of something that used to be alive.” However, while the pups carry 20 dire-wolf genes, Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Cornell University, speculates that many other genes also helped set them apart from other wolves: “We don’t know what that number is. It could be 20, or it could be 2,000.” Do you think Colossal has truly revived dire wolves, or are the pups “better understood as slightly-modified gray wolves,” as National Geographic has described them?
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In a related Times article written in 2021 when Colossal was first established, Mr. Zimmer raised many ethical questions about its mission, such as: “Is it humane to produce an animal whose biology we know so little about?” and “Who gets to decide whether they can be set loose?” How would you answer these questions? Do you think that resurrecting extinct creatures is ethical?
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What legal limits, if any, should be placed on attempts to genetically resurrect extinct animals? Or should scientists be permitted to freely research and experiment with the genetic engineering of extinct animals? Explain your thinking.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
