The world of ‘Jurassic Park’ isn’t possible, a mosquito preserved in amber with dinosaur blood is a good sci-fi engine, but it’s useless on all its terms. Despite this, de-extinction is indeed a possibility, something that Carles Laluisa Fuchs, director of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Barcelona and author of several books such as “De-extinctions”, advocates. “Extinction is not a complete elimination, but rather a reinvention of extinct species,” he explains. This is because they simply cannot be 100% like species that no longer exist. Among other things, because when we recover an extinct genome, we need a reference species, which is the closest species to the extinct one. But the current and extinct ones followed different paths millions of years ago. In other words, in the case of the mammoth, we use the Asian elephant as a current reference because it is most similar to the mammoth, but there is a small percentage of genes from which we will never recover. “De-extinction initiatives are basically conservation initiatives.” Carles Lalueza Fox Director of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Barcelona Another thing that Lalueza points out is that it cannot be said, because it is completely untrue, that if the mammoth remains are well preserved, their genome can be recovered. “While there is a consensus among those working in this line, we can’t really talk about de-extinction without Crispr.” Related news Crispr, a genetic revolution that aims to rewrite the rules Alexia Columba Jerez Improve crops, create cows that give more milk, develop custom-made organs, light up supermaterials, generate new biofuels … This cut-and-paste technology opens up an infinite world From the possibilities hence the risky proposals like those of Colossal, a biosciences and genetics company co-founded by Ben Lam, a technology and software entrepreneur, and George Church, who was the youngest scientist on the Human Genome Project. Colossal set out to bring back the woolly mammoth, direwolf, and dodo. Three possibilities that Lalueza dismisses as real options. “I think the marsupials are a bad example, because they diverged from each other millions of years ago, so the genetic reference we could use would be very far away. The problem with the dodo is that nothing has ever been cloned or done with the birds,” says LaLuisa. Lluís Montoliu, a researcher at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) went on to explain to ABC that “what Colossal proposes is refining the egg cell of an Asian elephant so that it closely resembles the genome of the woolly mammoth. Once this process is complete, the nucleus will be cloned like Dolly the sheep.” . In order to get her pregnant, the elephant’s “surrogate uterus” would be used. The question is why implement de-extinction. For Lalueza, “the standard answer is that it is a goal of ecological restoration. In many cases, the species that have disappeared had an essential ecological role in the ecosystem. For example, the birds that acted as pollinators. Environmental The giant steppe is gone, to be replaced by the tundra, which is an ecologically very unproductive environment in the region of Siberia.The official explanation is this, but “the real reason I think is behind these initiatives is that you can do basic research in all these aspects and then be able to apply it on conservation. In other words, de-extinction initiatives are essentially conservation initiatives.” Unlike Colossal, Lalueza suggests working with insects for that de-extinction. “In my case, I’m looking at a butterfly that went extinct in 1941. And then all of this technology can be used in Conservation of threatened insects, because insects are less visible, but in reality they have an impressive decline in their numbers.” And the balance of different ecosystems depends on them. More information Geoengineering, the controversial plan to play God with the weather Sadhguru, a yogi who fights an unknown problem of soil extinction Nanotechnology, on the verge of a revolution Therefore, the possibility of genetically engineering species is one of the future lines of this expert who thinks about combating diversity loss or climate change. I know this can be controversial, he says, but I think you have to be creative without to close the doors.”
