Off The Record
Scientists Have ‘Resurrected’ The Extinct Dire Wolf Using Ancient DNA And Gene Editing
“The world’s first successfully de-extincted animal” is a wolf species that became extinct some 12,500 years ago, according to Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences.
By altering the genes of a gray wolf, the closest living descendant of the prehistoric dire wolf, utilizing ancient DNA, cloning, and gene-editing technologies, giant scientists have produced three dire wolf pups, the business revealed Monday. In essence, the end product is a hybrid species that resembles its extinct predecessor in appearance.
The dire wolf, Aenocyon dirus, which was the inspiration for the fearsome canine featured in the HBO TV series “Game of Thrones,” was a top predator that once roamed North America. (HBO shares parent company Warner Bros. Discovery with CNN.) Dire wolves were larger in size than gray wolves and “had a slightly wider head, light thick fur and stronger jaw,” the company said.
Since 2021, Colossal has been attempting to bring the mammoth, dodo, and Tasmanian tiger back to life; however, the corporation had not previously made its work on dire wolves public.
“This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” said Ben Lamm, Colossal’s cofounder and CEO, in a news release. “Our team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies.”
The three dire wolves reside on a 2,000-acre property that is surrounded by 10-foot (3-meter) high “zoo-grade” fencing. Security guards, drones, and live video feeds keep an eye on them. Colossal claimed that the establishment was registered with the US Department of Agriculture and certified by the American Humane Society.
Dire wolf fossils and ancient DNA
Colossal’s researchers claimed to have assembled two high-quality Aenocyon dirus genomes, or full sets of genetic material, using ancient DNA taken from two dire wolf fossils.
To find the genetic variations for attributes unique to dire wolves, such white coats and longer, thicker fur, the scientists compared the genomes with those of live canids, including wolves, jackals, and foxes. The company’s news release stated that 99.5% of the DNA of gray wolves and dire wolves was similar.
“We aren’t trying to bring something back that’s 100% genetically identical to another species. Our goal with de-extinction is always create functional copies of these extinct species. We were focusing on identifying variants that we knew would lead to one of these key traits,” Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s chief science officer told CNN.
The business then cloned the most promising cell lines and transferred them into donor eggs from domestic dogs after using the genetic analysis data to modify gray wolf cells, making 20 changes in 14 genes.
“So we can take these eggs and we remove the nucleus, and then you insert the nucleus that we’ve edited from that gray wolf cell, and that is what we clone,” Shapiro, who is currently on a leave of absence from her role as professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explained.
According to Shapiro, domestic dogs, particularly huge, mixed-breed hounds, served as surrogate mothers after receiving healthy, matured embryos. In all, the researchers made eight transfers, averaging forty-five embryos each attempt.
According to Colossal Biosciences, a female dire wolf pup was born on January 30, 2025, and two male puppies were born on October 1, 2024.
“When we found out that we had singleton puppies in each of those litters eventually, that was actually maybe not the optimal outcome, but it’s pretty optimal,” said Matt James, Colossal’s chief animal officer. “We didn’t want to suddenly have 25 dire wolves on our hands, right? That would have been really hard to manage.”
The pups were “habituated to people,” but not tame, according to James. The two elder male dire wolves return to base twice a day to feed, but they are “exploring more and more of their habitat every day.” In the future, he said, he wants to “grow the pack.”
“We’re still seeing a lot of juvenile behaviors. I think they are much more standoffish, much more skittish (than gray wolves). We haven’t seen them really fully express all of their behavior. They’re still juvenile — when they get that testosterone surge, I think we’ll see a lot of interesting behavior,” he said.
“They’re an amazing opportunity for us to learn tons and tons about de-extinction, about cloning, about genetic editing and all the effects after that.”
Gene editing for de-extinction
According to Love Dalén, an evolutionary genomics professor at Stockholm University’s Centre for Palaeogenetics and Colossal adviser, the company effectively used CRISPR technology to create a hybrid genome to accomplish its goal. The procedure involved removing specific gray wolf gene variants and substituting them with traits associated with dire wolves.
“There’s no secret that across the genome, this is 99.9% gray wolf. There is going to be an argument in the scientific community regarding how many genes need to be changed to make a dire wolf, but this is really a philosophical question,” Dalén said.
“It carries dire wolf genes, and these genes make it look more like a dire wolf than anything we’ve seen in the last 13,000 years. And that is very cool.”
The work by the scientists was a “huge leap” from anything done in the area in the past, according to Dalén, who claimed to have been “a little bit” involved in the research of the dire wolf genomes but not to have met the pups in person or participated in the gene editing or cloning procedure.
“The way I see this is that they have resurrected the dire wolf phenotype (the observable traits of a species) and we know from the genome that they probably looked a bit like these puppies. To me, it’s a dire wolf in that sense,” he said.
Shapiro stated that the scientists had succeeded in bringing back the “functional essence” of the dire wolf and that the argument over whether the wolves are exact replicas of their extinct predecessors is pointless.
“I recognize that the scientific community is saying, ‘Oh, it’s not genetically close enough to a dire wolf.’ These classifications are human constructs. They’re useful frameworks for talking about things, but they’re tools, not truths, right? And we successfully identified 20 precise genetic variants,” she said. “It’s not very much, but we did—and in doing that, we resurrected these key differences in the way these animals look.”
Since Lamm, a serial entrepreneur, and Harvard University biologist George Church formed Colossal in September 2021 and initially revealed ambitions to bring the mammoth back to life, the company has raised at least $435 million. The business claims it is on track to introduce the first woolly mammoth calves in 2028, although that quest has taken longer than Lamm had originally anticipated.
De-extinction and conservation
The business aspires to assist endangered species actively with the technologies that produced the dire wolf. Using a novel, less invasive method of cloning that was discovered during the dire wolf research, Colossal announced on Monday that it has successfully generated two litters of cloned red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf species.
“The red wolf… is a great example of a species that’s hindered by a lack of genetic diversity. What what we could do, is begin to use this technology to reintroduce founders into a population in a way that would enhance genetic diversity, the robustness, the adaptability of a recovery program,” James said.
According to Michael Knapp, an associate professor in the anatomy department at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Colossal is right to claim that their technology can help conserve endangered animals.
Other potential uses include “editing harmful mutations out of the populations of threatened species and introducing traits that may help rare species adapt to environmental change,” Knapp said.
“On the other hand, the technology still has its limitations,” he added. “Genes that may be introduced to give a species more fur, might have other and unwanted functions as well. Also, often not only the species, but the ecosystems they used to live in are extinct.”
Many opponents of de-extinction contend that the enormous sums of money spent on the research would be better employed elsewhere and that the hybrid animals’ development and upbringing could endanger the lives of the surrogate animals. Christopher Preston, an environmental philosophy professor at the University of Montana, pointed out the facility’s scale and the American Humane Society’s endorsement, saying Colossal seems to be considering animal welfare issues.
“Colossal has taken thoughtful precautions to screen against any unintended genetic consequences of their edits, eliminating risky edits known to be associated with poor outcomes,” he added.
However, he stated that it is difficult to envision dire wolves contributing to an ecosystem, which the corporation has stated is the ultimate objective of its endeavors to produce genetically modified mammoth-elephants.
“In states like Montana, we are currently having trouble keeping a healthy population of gray wolves on the land in the face of amped up political opposition,” Preston said. “It is hard to imagine dire wolves ever being released and taking up an ecological role. So, I think it is important to ask what role the new animals will serve.”
More details on Colossal’s technology, the creation of the dire wolf pups, and the animals’ current lives have been added to this article.
Trending:
- Giant Wolf Sits Down Next To This Woman, Now Watch The Moment When Their Eyes Meet
- “Werewolf” Stands On Side Of Road For Months: Then A Stranger Approaches And Does The Unthinkable
- 8 Unexpected Health Advantages Of Passing Gas That You Should Be Aware Of
Please SHARE this story with Family and Friends and let us know what you think in comments!
