This Texas-based company wants to revive the extinct woolly mammoth. Well, sorta


BEN LAMM,  GEORGE CHURCH


James Hartley
Mon, September 13, 2021

Woolly mammoths, the elephant-like prehistoric beasts that, as their name would suggest, were giant and hairy, went extinct around 10,000 years ago. A Texas-based tech entrepreneur wants to change that. Sort of.

Ben Lamm, the tech entrepreneur whose ambitions might give sci-fi dystopian authors nightmares, hopes to venture down a path “Jurassic Park” (the book, not the movie) author Michael Crichton contemplated in the best-seller 31 years ago. But Lamm’s mission isn’t to open a theme park full of dangerous, extinct predators and a couple of friendly herbivores.

Instead, he hopes to use the reintroduction of extinct species into the world as a way to combat climate change and advance “thoughtful disruptive conservation,” according to a news release.

Lamm wants to “rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through the repopulation of extinct animals,” he said in the news release in which he announced the launch of his bioscience and genetics company, Colossal. He hopes Colossal will lead to rapid advancement in the area of “species de-extinction.”

Colossal marks the sixth company Lamm created. Austin-based Hypergiant, a tech company, which is working on artificial intelligence for the likes of NASA, was his fifth.

With this latest venture, Lamm is using $15 million raised by Colossal to work with Harvard Medical School professor George Church to combine the genetics of an elephant with a mammoth “that is genetically engineered with traits to help it survive in the Arctic,” according to the release.

The animals created, if Lamm and Church are successful, won’t be true woolly mammoths. Their genetic code will be different because of the use of elephant genes. But Lamm thinks the success of this mission could open the door for his company to revive other extinct animals, as well as save the more than 1 million animals, plants and fungi the United Nations in 2019 said are at risk of extinction.

When those species go extinct, the ecosystems in which they live begin to collapse and impact the health of humans and our blue marble. Lamm believes that restoring the woolly mammoth could lead to the revitalization of the Arctic grasslands, an area in North America and North Eurasia that contributes to carbon sequestering, methane suppression and light reflection, according to the release.

He hopes that reviving this ecosystem could help combat climate change.

And Church, a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, agrees. He said in the news release that the company has the potential to impact ecological conservation and other climate change issues.

While Colossal is fronting the money, the research into this venture would be the responsibility of Church and his lab at Harvard. The technology that exists isn’t ready to create a (sorta) woolly mammoth, but Colossal thinks his research could “create technology leaps in multiplexed genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and other emerging areas,” according to the release.

“Technologies discovered in pursuit of this grand vision – a living, walking proxy of a woolly mammoth – could create very significant opportunities in conservation and beyond, not least of which include inspiring public interest in STEM, prompting timely discussions in bioethics, and raising awareness of the vital importance of biodiversity,” Church said in the release.