‘They are genetically modified gray wolves’

Romulo, Remo and Khaleesi, the specimens of Wolf Huargo that the Biotechnological company Colossal Bioscience says they have developed, are not the first of an extinct species 10,000 years ago, but genetically modified gray wolves with some giant wolf or Huargo wolf genes.

The scientists made this clarification after Colossal yesterday announced that he had “welcomed” this species thanks to a complete genome of Lobo Huargo, rebuilt from old fossils of fossils of 11,500 and 72,000 years old.

Colossal said that he had edited 20 Gray Lobos Genes with this old DNA -Processing a tooth of 13,000 years and a 72,000 -year -old skull- to infer in the puppies some characteristics of the Huargos wolves.

Then, they created embryos from the modified cells of the gray wolf and implanted them in bitches that gestated and gave birth to the puppies in October. They are currently in an ecological reserve certified by the American Humane Society whose location is secret.

The Spanish paleogenetist Carles Lalueza-Fox, researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), is clear: “You cannot talk about de-sextization, but genetically modified wolves (in particular 14 genes),” he says.

“As the Huargo wolf genome has not been published, we do not know how many genes differentiate it from the gray wolf, but attending to the time of divergence of both species (about 4 or 5 million years), will be several thousand,” and in the experiment they only used genes with expression in the external aspect, he warns.

“If we compare it with us and the Neanderthals, whose lineages were separated only a tenth of the time of the two species of wolves, we have 2% of their genes, but no one would say that we are Neanderthals. Much less in the case of the giant wolves,” concludes Lalueza-Fox.

For Lluís Montoliu, a researcher at the National Biotechnology Center of Madrid, the conclusion is the same: Colossal modified gray wolves using the Crispr-CAS9 genetic editing technique and obtained a wolf “that looks like the giant wolf but that is not. It does not have all its genome,” he emphasizes.

And in statements to the scientific resources Platform Science Media Center in New Zealand, the director of the Paleogenetic Laboratory of Otago (New Zealand), Espic Rawlence, clarifies that to welcome a species you have to clone it before, and the problem is that it is impossible to clone extinct animals because the DNA is not well preserved enough.

“What Colossal Biosciences has produced is a gray wolf with similar characteristics to those of a giant wolf but it is not a reintroduced giant wolf, but a hybrid,” ditch the paleogenetist.

For its part, Philip Seddon, of the Department of Zoology of the University of Otago, an expert in bioethics and ‘de -sextization’, points out that “Colossal Biosciences, the company of 10,000 million dollars that is behind the efforts to resurrect the tanudo mammut, the marsupial wolf and the dodo, just announced what he describes as the ‘wolf’ of the giant wolf, a species that was extinguished about 10,000 years ago. ”

But, even if they talk about “de -sextinction” and “have made amazing technological advances, friendly puppies are not giant wolves, but genetically modified gray wolves,” he says.

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But for Montoliu, the question to be asked still: “Why do you want to do this? Do we want to make a zoo of impossible creatures? This issue should worry and see that it is not something that is being answered,” says Montoliu.

The geneticist recalls that, according to Colossal and his founder George Church, the goal of returning mammoths to nature is “to combat climate change, piss the tundra, compact the terrain and prevent greenhouse gases from escaping”, and that can “be more or less credible.”

In this case, “I don’t think it’s to welcome the wolf,” he clarifies.

However, Montoliu acknowledges that “technologically they are in charge of the use of CRISPR-CAS9 tools and are able to edit hundreds, even thousands of genes at the same time, which is not simple.”

“They seem to have solved many of the problems of genetic multiedion because their animals survive,” he adds.

For Laueza-Fox, if it is true that in Colossal they were able to modify 20 genetic positions in 14 genes-because this announcement is not supported by a scientific publication-it would be a positive perspective, because “the techniques could be applied to modify endangered species and make them more resilient, for example, to climate change”.

Seddon also believes that colossal genetic technology advances could have “implications for the conservation of existing, not examous species,” while Rawlence suggests that they should be used to preserve “what remains, not to resurrect extinct species.”

Lobo Huargo puppies are not the first colossal creation, which a month ago presented mice with mammoth hair, also made with genetic edition and generated the same controversies.

With EFE information

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