Are We Ready For Woolly Mice (And Other Genetically Altered Animals)?

A company that wants to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth and other animals has created woolly mice.

The genetically modified mice have big wavy hair that's much longer than a normal mouse.

Scientists with Texas-based Colossal Biosciences targeted specific genes to give the mice a woolly appearance.

They looked at the woolly mammoth's closest living relative, the Asian elephant, for guidance.

It conjures the famous Jurassic Park exchange between the park's financier, John Hammond, and ethical scientist Dr. Ian Malcolm:

"Malcolm: Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun.
Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...
Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

OK, so it's just a mouse, but Colossal Biosciences (doesn't that sound like the villain overlords in a superhero movie?) has made it clear that it wants to bring back some of the animals that have long since been extinct, similar to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

And even though they're not close yet, it seems it's only a matter of time.

As an example, for the woolly mice, Colossal Biosciences had to edit just eight pieces of the mouse DNA to make it become "woolly."

But to do an entire animal, well, a much larger portion of the DNA would need to be edited.

“Unless you decide to make EVERY edit necessary … in the genome, you are only ever going to create a crude approximation of any extinct creature, based on an incomplete idea of what it should look like. You are never going to ‘bring back’ a mammoth,” bioscientist Torri Hedbridge told CNN.

However, Colossal Biosciences told CNN (and anyone else who will listen) that they fully intend to recreate the woolly mammoth, dodo, and Tasmanian tiger, by editing the genome of each species’ closest living relative. The resulting hybrid would be visually indistinguishable from its extinct forerunner.

But should they?

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