https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/384478
Colossal, a bioscience and genetics engineering company that launches today and is backed by Harvard University and some of the world's most forward-thinking scientists plans to bring back the wooly mammoth in an attempt to fight climate change.
Colossal, a bioscience and genetics engineering company that launches today and is backed by Harvard University and some of the world's most forward-thinking scientists plans to bring back the wooly mammoth in an attempt to fight climate change.
Yes, this seems crazy to me, but the idea of bringing back an extinct animal is intriguing. The possibilities for use of CRISPR technology are mindboggling. It will be interesting to see if they have any success.Quote:Quote:
Fighting climate change with mammoths may seem crazy, but it has decades of research behind it including the work of George Church, Ph.D., a world-renowned pioneer in genomics. Church runs a lab at Harvard and has been exploring how to genetically re-engineer the woolly mammoth using its closest living relative, the Asian Elephant.
The reason is this: One of the greatest threats to the earth is the melting of the arctic permafrost and its massive release of the greenhouse gasses that are stored safely in its freeze. When the herds of woolly mammoth and other animals vanished, that area became covered with a forest that keeps the earth warmer. Church is betting on the idea that a resurrected population of the mammoths, if let loose in the arctic, would chomp and stomp down the bush and trees, exposing the earth to subzero temperatures and allowing the tundra's original grasslands to grow back. That ecosystem, maintained by the large creatures, would then effectively sequester carbon, rather than allowing it back into the atmosphere.
