"Wooly mice" a test run for mammoth gene editing | Hacker News Reader

"Wooly mice" a test run for mammoth gene editing

arstechnica.com

70 pointsLorenDB62 comments

Much of the coverage of this story has credulously repeated the company's marketing press release without any sort of critical appraisal of the actual significance of the announcement (read: not much) or of the stated goal, which is misguided in the extreme. I found this (older) article about the "de-extinction" project [1] to be much more informative. The same journalist covered the new announcement last week [2] (submitted to hn here: [3]).

[1]: https://defector.com/what-kind-of-future-does-de-extinction-...

[2]: https://defector.com/do-not-be-bamboozled-by-the-new-fluffy-...

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302625

This is very fascinating and a photogenic demonstration of what is possible via gene editing. My hope is that this research leads to cures of genetic diseases that have previously been incurable.

I doubt the efficacy of creating mammoth like creatures, or elephants that have mammoth traits. We’re talking about recreating an ice age creature that, ostensibly we hunted into extinction. But with climate change and a warming planet, even if we were successful in recreating mammoths, where would such a creature live? James Hansen, who testified to congress in 1988 and informed the public about climate change, recently said that the Paris goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees Centigrade is pretty much dead. At 2 degrees we’ll be seeing ice free arctics at-least once per decade. With that future, there’s simply not going to be any habitat for these creatures to live in.

So... Mammoths are elephants. Asian elephants are more closely related to mammoths than African elephants. They were likely genetically compatible. You could probably achieve a passable mammoth phenotype with selective breeding.

Also, Proboscideans existed in many climate zones through various climactic periods. They're not narrow specialists.

Mammoths just happen to capture the imagination, representing the ice age. Megafaunal extinction. Ancient hunters. Rewilding. Etc.

There's still an enormous number of edits they need to make. I don't remember the exact number they said but I believe it was in the several hundred to low thousands range. Meanwhile the rest of the world is mostly focusing on "an edit". It's not impossible, but it'll be quite an undertaking.

Enormous number of edits needed to achieve what specifically? Hairiness?

OOH... any hairy elephant they produce will be "mammoth enough" for most. Elephant + Hairy = Mammoth. It won't be the same species/subspecies as extinct mammoths, but it'll be a mammoth.

OTOH, any number of edits will be insufficient for others. It won't be the extinct species, just an artificial hybrid.

IMO... this is one that's best left as a fantasy. The moment there a little herd of resurrected mammals exist in a zoo as real life animals is the moment the mystique will dissipate.

>OTOH, any number of edits will be insufficient for others. It won't be the extinct species, just an artificial hybrid.

I think there is a sweet spot where most people would consider it to be an un-extincted mammoth vs just an elephant that was bred for extra hair.

Of course they capture the imagination... I mean... imagine wooly mammoths roaming the boulevards of Paris... or having wings and perching on top on the Eiffel Tower... sadly no cure for cancer in sight.

Not quite sure where you were going with this reply, but username fits

I was jesting, but only so. I think we are going to see weird DNA experiments in the wild, because people will do it for shits and giggle (or social media engagement).

https://pleistocenepark.ru/

Too bad. Mammoths? Not possible and unethical, according to this geneticist's opinion piece in The Guardian.

> The only way you will ever see a living mammoth is if our physicist friends finally crack time travel. I am a mere geneticist, but my understanding is that this remains very much in the realm of fiction. Perhaps in the meantime we could direct our scientific excitement and energies towards real problems, things on which millions of lives depend, rather than on this mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/woolly...

The mammoth is their moonshot project. They’re working on a number of species that have more complete genomes in the name of de-extinction.

Boy that geneticist must be fun at parties. Focus on my pet issues exactly like I do or else you are literally morally bankrupt! You can tell his mind has been throughly warped by academic knife fighting for grants.

Someone else mentioned sabre-tooth, I'd love for someone to figure out a way to revive the Moa - much more recently extinct, so maybe easier? (Though perhaps harder due to the climate being less amenable to preserving DNA)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa

I think most of this work going towards mammoths is also applicable to other species and a lot of the people specifically against reviving the mammoth seem to forget that.

I'm not happy with all this stuff - I think it's cruel. Back in the early 70s the lab I worked in had a colony of mice called "wobblers" that in some sense modelled Parkinson's Disease - but not usefully, as far as I could see.

I think it's acceptable if they have good reason to believe the gene editing isn't going to lead to a trait that harms the animal. I think fluffier fur isn't a big deal. And I say this as a vegetarian and a huge supporter of animal rights.

Inducing Parkinsonian symptoms or removing limbs is very different from some cosmetic changes. Maybe they also need to be kept in cooler environments or something, but assuming they accommodate that, this doesn't seem cruel to me.

I dunno - the right-hand mouse doesn't look so healthy around the face.

Just to be clear, I've killed quite a few mice in my time (traps, poison, cat) when they become nuisances. I'm not sentimental about them at all, but I do draw the line at actual cruelty.

To me, who has safely trapped a ton of mice (around 15 I think, over the last couple of years), and then driven way out into the nearest wild area and released them unharmed, using killing traps or poison is cruel.

I don't especially judge you for it. Well, maybe for the poison since that can get into the food chain. But I also don't think you have some kind of moral high ground compared to these researchers.

Traps at least are not cruel - usually almost instant death by their neck being broken. Cats are natural predators. I don't much like using poison, but sometimes you have to.

I have never claimed any high moral ground, just that the deaths I'm talking about are quick, rather than them (or any animal) being bred to suffer.

> Traps at least are not cruel - usually almost instant death by their neck being broken.

This is far from true. Traps very often breaks the mouses lower back, or trap just a leg, and leave them struggling for hours.

Poison is definitely not quick and can cause the suffering of many animals in the food chain.

You are still claiming a moral high ground because you believe that the animals you cause to suffer die quickly. This is an incorrect belief.

The survival chances of relocated mice are basically nil.

You are deluding yourself to make yourself feel better.

No judgement, I've done it too. But now we both know better.

I already knew this. When it became apparent that I'd need to do pest control, I did some research and figured out what was the path of least cruelty, being fully aware that zero cruelty isn't an option.

I relocate them near to an old dump that people still use illegally. I figured there's more places to shelter there and plenty of good around. Yes, they have a higher chance of dying than staying in my cosy house. But it's not like I'm dumping them in a desert, and when they do die, it'll be part of the natural food chain, providing a meal to an owl or a fox.

If I could be sure that a spring trap would kill instantly, I'd choose that instead. I would never choose poison or glue traps.

I think giving them a chance does make a real difference compared to killing them on the spot.

But it doesn't. It just makes you feel better about it.

If anything, relocating makes the mouse more likely to die slowly and painfully.

So, your options are: definitely quick and easy, with some ick factor for you? Or false feelings of good-doing, followed by nearly certain starvation, dehydration, exposure, and/or predation?

The honest option is to get over your own squeamishness and not be the feel-good torturer.

Do you have solid evidence?

I mean, the average wild mouse lives a year or so, tops. Small rodents are not long lived.

It's also cruel to eradicate entire species. At this point we can only choose between playing incompetent god or competent god. This work is the latter, and I'm here for it.

No, I don't think it is cruel. For example, wolves were eradicated from what is now the UK in the Tudor ages. But it wasn't done with any particular cruelty (for the time), and just because they were eating sheep (wool was a huge industry back then).

There will be a lot of Dunning-Kruger phenomena involved.

Biology is hard to understand, because it is not logical in the same way that maths is. Our bodies contain untold amounts of traces of ancient bottleneck events that are no longer relevant, but the adaptations are still with us.

In that dilemma we are definitely god, you merely debate the competency.

Some folks thought to develop some semi-lethal virus in a lab in Wuhan because "we can/why not" and we know what happened next. Many of us have watched every Resident Evil movie or the 12 Monkeys.

Steve Gibson keeps saying "what could possibly go wrong". Our (commoners'/plebes') fates have historically been determined by warmongers, "hawks", ruthless immoral people who play chess with real humans.

I am not surprised that something will definitely happen. I will be surprised on the "when". I am semi-prepared for the morons to eliminate 90% of the world's population some way or another. I just hope that if/when that happens either "I go out" it will be quick and painless, or I will have the chance to 'activate my plan' and perhaps live a simple life in a forest away from the destruction.

>Back in the early 70s the lab I worked in had a colony of mice called "wobblers" that in some sense modelled Parkinson's Disease - but not usefully, as far as I could see.

If it wasn't useful, why did they have them? It's not labs just keep breeding mice that aren't useful for their experiments.

Small discussion, including video (12 points, 10 hours ago, 2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43254455

Oh, they did find out about the original Japanese fancy mice from the 1800s, which were imported to Europe as first lab mice. https://bsky.app/profile/toriherridge.bsky.social/post/3ljln...

All well known and well studied mutations

This is ridiculous. They started with the ambitious goal of cloning a mammoth, then scaled it down to making elephants slightly more mammoth-like, and now they've ended up doing a literature search on genes that make mice a bit furrier. At this point, they’re just another biotech company... which would be fine if they were honest about it. Instead, they’ve come up with this completely unrealistic plan supposedly aimed at combating climate change. Don’t be mistaken - anyone investing in this is doing so purely to profit from their intellectual property, not for any noble cause.

it would be interesting to see if any of the targeted gene insertions, are conserved across surviving polar mamals, musk oxen, elk, polar bears, foxes...,mice even perhaps marine mamals, and polar humans there are likely going to be multiple genetic pathways for each polar adaptations, not least of which will be enhanced low light vision and the (cognitive?,sensory?,smell?) ability to navigate in the dark. We are not talking about some kind of finch here,a mammoth is more extreemofilic mega fauna, and therein are likely the reasons for its extinction, so mammoth mkII will need to take that AND, modern climate/ecological conditions into consideration in order to project a plausible re-introduction.

Wildlife declined 70% in the last 50 years thanks to our "progress" and now we bring back mammoths for shit and giggles, it never cease to amaze me how clever yet dumb we are as a specie

>and now we bring back mammoths for shit and giggles

You realize this research has other applications right?

Like what ? Can i grow a fell and sell it ? /s

Lets also add the sabre-toothed genes and let it escape out of the lab.

GATTACA here we come

Can we have any genetics results without people unironically citing fiction as if it was history?

can we bury our minds further into the sand as if it was a good idea?

Sounds like a typical SV play. Try different concepts, get product market fit and scale up.

I, for one, welcome our hairy, cancer-free, super-intelligent mammoth-mice overlords.

I prefer our grains in the mouths of human beings, not rodents.

I've seen those crazy videos of mice breeding unchecked inside a granary. It's freaking scary. Imagine the fleas! No thank you.

And now they've got better hair than me? Science is out of control! (j/k)

TBF, the mice already have better hair than me, but that's beside the point.

maybe we need to find the gene for mice pattern baldness to even the scales

thanks for the legit lol, but my back and groin have dibs on that tech

FUN FACT OF THE DAY: Listening to LOTR with my kids, I made a joke that "Gimli, son of Gloin" was really "Gimli, son of Gloin, son of Groin" (having no idea what Gloin's father's name was), and when my son read the full timeline at the end of LOTR, Gloin's father really was named Groin, so now, in my family, it's "Gimli, grandson of Groin". Enjoy!

Interestingly if not suspiciously, this lab is CIA-funded as well as Thiel-funded. Thiel funded George Church directly before Colossal began.

> Church was partly funded from 2005 to 2007 by the nonprofit Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation.

Completely unsurprising. This whole project seems so superfluous that it must be some intelligence-related thing for a wholly different purpose. Can you share how you know it is CIA funded?

https://theintercept.com/2022/09/28/cia-extinction-woolly-ma...

So, they gonna edit elephant's gene to make it wooly, and call it a mammoth. It's like these chinese zoos dyeing dogs as lions and pandas.

"the plan is to take stem cells from a closely related species that has not gone extinct, and edit a series of changes based on the corresponding genomes of the deceased species. In the case of the mammoth, that means the elephant."

My impression from previous info released by Colossal is that the plan is to take isolated fragments of mammoth DNA and put those back into elephants. They haven't been able to recover a full mammoth genome, but they've been able to recover many fragments that include cold adaptations, and long hair is just one of them. The result won't be a mammoth, but it would be part-way there and, perhaps, something that could actually live in the far North.

They face a lot of sticky challenges though. Last I read anything on their work, they were hoping to use artificial wombs rather than surrogate elephant mothers due to ethical concerns. Elephants often grieve for dead newborns, and genetically engineered mammoth-elephant hybrids are more likely to die shortly after birth than not. Bringing hybrids to term in elephant mothers would be inhumane. However, their website now mentions plans for using surrogate elephants. What's going on there? A lot of this work also involves collaboration with Russia, which can't be easy right now, ethically or practically.

The end goal is still laudable though. Restoring the mammoth steppe, if done in time, could help keep massive amounts of methane locked in permafrost, reducing the impact of global warming. It's a moon-shot, but not impossible.

I think the main obstacle is not the ethical one, but the very long gestation period of elephants (more than 18 months). Mice, in contrast, have a gestation period of 20 days. So each iteration of your experiment will take 20 times longer when you use elephants. A postdoc might be there for 2 iterations, while a tenured professor could perform maybe 10 iterations throughout their career.

It's really strange, and nice, to see a company thinking in the long term. I wish more companies would do it.

How mammoths would help with the permafrost ?

Permafrost is frozen ground that contains large amounts of greenhouse gases. When permafrost melts, microbes in the soil release methane and carbon dioxide. Woolly mammoths may have helped keep permafrost frozen by trampling shrubs and moss, and packing down snow. Grass absorbs less sunlight than trees, which keeps the ground cooler.

I'd say it's like giving a sub-Saharan African a fur coat for the summertime.

It's not looking like any creature on Earth is going to need more hair for quite a few centuries, if not longer.

Maybe my balding head will be a benefit after all :-)

Depends. If the gulf stream stops, europe will get considerably colder first and who knows for how long?

Until the next...mice age.

Bingo, Dino DNA!

It's disgusting how scientists come up with these elaborate excuses to do things they know everyone will object to. Stop playing god

The push here is much more from techno-utopian venture capitalist grifters than from scientists.

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