Bringing back the woolly mammoth to roam Earth again. Is it even possible? | The Excerpt

On a special episode (first released on April 18, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Could the woolly mammoth really be brought back to life? Ben Lamm thinks so. He’s the CEO and Co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, a company at the heart of an evolving science that aims to see this ancient animal and others return in the name of preserving and promoting biodiversity. According to him, the success of this work could just be the ticket that saves humanity. Lamm joined The Excerpt podcast to talk about the possible impacts and the ongoing ethical debate around de-extinction.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Thursday, April 18th, 2024 and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Could the woolly mammoth return? Ben Lamm thinks so. He's the co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, a company at the heart of an evolving science that aims to bring the ancient animal back to life. Here to talk about his work and the ongoing ethical debate around de-extinction is Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal. Ben, thanks for coming on The Excerpt today.

Ben Lamm:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Ben, it sounds like something straight out of science fiction, I'm sure you've gotten that before, bringing back the woolly mammoth. Can you just set the stage for us here? Why the woolly mammoth and why now?

Ben Lamm:

For us, we think that de-extinction and species preservation go hand in hand. And we are at this interesting inflection point for biodiversity where when we started the business, a lot of the data that we saw was that we were going to lose up to 10% of biodiversity between now and 2050. Fast-forward three years later, those new numbers are now 35 to 50% loss of biodiversity between now and 2050. And so I think that now more than ever, we need to build technologies to save critically endangered species as well as build a de-extinction toolkit that we can leverage to bring back lost keystone species, should we need to. And hopefully we won't need to, but the current trajectory doesn't look as positive as one would hope.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned biodiversity, Ben. What's the benefit of bringing this animal back functionally? I've read about restoring Arctic tundra ecosystems, for instance. What are the tangible functional benefits here?

Ben Lamm:

I think you've got two core functions when we talk about bringing back specifically the mammoth. One is there's a huge movement to looking at reintroducing species back into their natural environment, a process called rewilding, which we're working with partners around the world on. Specifically with the mammoth, we have this massively degraded ecosystem in the Arctic that is full of carbon, full of methane, but it doesn't have the best biodiversity turnover there because you just don't have what the cold tolerant species used to have there. So what's interesting is that a lot of scientists around the world have been doing different types of ecological studies and impact studies for reintroducing cold tolerant megafauna back into the environment. And then on the far side of the argument, you've got other scientists that say, "Hey, you may not have that level of impact, but generally speaking, a more diverse ecosystem, and kind of like what we see in Africa with forest elephants and savanna elephants, there is a massive impact to the carbon nitrogen cycle, which also helps add and improve that degraded ecosystem."

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, absolutely. Excited to take a look at that, Ben. So the woolly mammoth went extinct around 4,000 years ago. A video on the UK's Natural History Museum website posits that climate change was probably the cause of the mammoth's extinction. But if anything, the climate is now getting warmer, not colder. How do you bring back the grasses, Ben, that they primarily fed on and wear?

Ben Lamm:

People think of mammoths as, when they start to think of the mammoth, they're like, "Oh, this is a species that sometimes people put it into the category of like 65 million years ago." But to your point, they actually went extinct only, people were building the pyramids while mammoths still existed on the Earth. And what people also don't realize is during these interglacial periods, there was actually times which were as warm and a little bit warmer than today. And then there were also subspecies like Colombian mammoths and others and so many of them were actually found in pretty warm and temperate climates. And so not only could they not survive today, but we do believe that they could thrive today with the existing ecosystem that exists today compared to what was around in some of the cycles that have been present, even in the last 80,000 years. We don't even have to go back 2.6 million years ago.

And then what we've seen in Arctic rewilding and generally in rewilding is that when you reintroduce a cold tolerant or even a non-cold tolerant herbivore in keystone species like in Africa, or what we've seen in Yellowstones with some of the predators like the wolves, as well as what's been modeled with the mammoths, is that you actually have a flourishing of fauna and plant fauna including grasslands, shrubs, and other species, because a lot of these large herbivores are massive grazers, defecators, and they enrich that carbon nitrogen cycling.

Taylor Wilson:

So we've talked about the positives, the benefits here, Ben. What are the potential, the possible negatives or drawbacks to these projects?

Ben Lamm:

I think the biggest thing that could be a negative drawback is education. I think that it's on our responsibility to ensure that everything that we're doing is transparent, everything that we're doing is ethical. I think that it's our job to really educate the public and have interesting dialogues like this and not be closed off and whatnot. We're pretty open-minded. Some of our biggest critics are now advisors or even full-time at the company. We just brought on Beth Shapiro, who in the early days of the company was not our biggest fan, and we actually engaged with those critics and get feedback from them and allow them to help shape our mission and vision. Because we believe this is not an American project or a Texan project or an Alaskan project. We really do view this as an international project in terms of what the impact is across species and for conservation.

And so for us, I think that really being thoughtful about listening to critical feedback, being really thoughtful about the intended and unintended consequences around rewilding, I think's really, really important. And in making sure that all of the technologies that we develop on this path to de-extinction are directly applied to conservation in short order and make sure that we continue to bring new money to conservation.

Taylor Wilson:

Ben, we've talked a lot of big picture here. Can you just get into the science a bit for our listeners? How does all this work and what are some of the latest developments here?

Ben Lamm:

Fundamentally, what you have to do to bring back an extinct species is, and the way that we think about that is you're not making a clone of that extinct species. So there's a lot of computational analysis that goes into this, there's a lot of select gene targeting, and then there's also enhancement. So we think of de-extinction as really kind of rebuilding extinct species for thriving today. And that's a combination of de-extincting those core genes. And we get those core genes by assembling a lot of ancient DNA because DNA quickly degrades and is fragmented over time. But then at the same time, we also have an opportunity from a computational analysis perspective that we will take the genes from the existing living species and do comparative analysis using AI so that we truly understand what genes made a mammoth a mammoth. And then once you do that, you can start to establish different cell lines from these species that exist today, like the Asian elephant, which is 99.6% same genetically as the mammoth. And then we can engineer in those lost genes and de-extinct those lost genes into Asian elephant cell lines.

And then I'm oversimplifying it, but then we go through a process. There's a lot of testing and functional and molecular assays along the way. But then we go through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer that Dolly made probably most famous over the years. And then in that we then take that embryo after we've done that somatic cell nuclear transfer of the nucleus, and we insert it into that of a surrogate host, in this case, the Asian elephant. And then hopefully 22 months later we get our first mammoth calves. So that's kind of the high level view of the process. So it's very paralleled to our work on saving the northern white rhino that we're working on with Thomas Hildebrandt in Kenya. It's a very, very similar process, but this was a big achievement for our teams that have been working on it for the last three years.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned the northern white rhino. What are some of the other species you're currently working on?

Ben Lamm:

We've announced the mammoth. We've announced the Tasmanian tiger or the thylacine that went extinct in 1936 in Australia. And we've announced the dodo, which went extinct in the 1600s in Mauritius. And it's the symbol of extinction of human caused extinction. And most people really just want to talk to us about, they're like, "What's the next extinct animal?" It's like, "We are working on that, shouldn't that be enough?" We are working on, I feel like we're working on quite a bit. These projects are very hard. We have 200 plus people that are working on these projects worldwide. But I love the question that you asked because I like to talk about there's actually more critically endangered species that we're working on. And so we're doing a lot of work right now in Africa using AI and drones, not even genetics, to understand a little bit of population genomics from genetics, but mostly herd dynamics, working with elephant orphanages to figure out how do we best rewild elephants back that have been separated from a herd that are orphaned back into herd, understanding migratory corridors and migratory patterns in Kenya with AI and drones.

Taylor Wilson:

Very exciting stuff. So I'm curious, we've talked a lot about Colossal. Are there other companies working on this too, doing similar work? And do you see this as a collaborative effort among scientists all over the world?

Ben Lamm:

Science I think generally should be collaborative. Sometimes it gets competitive. I don't come from the field, but generally it should be collaborative and most researchers around the world do want to collaborate. We've been very fortunate. We work with Rewild, we work with Save the Elephants, we work with the Species Survival Commission, which is a sub part of the IUCN. We work with the Asian Elephant Specialist Group, Conservation Nation, WildArk, the Vertebrate Genome Project, who I love. Their goal is to back up, do sequencing for all vertebrates on the planet. Think of it as the effective seed vault only for animals. And so how do we sequence these animals and take those genetic codes and store them on servers and protect life so hopefully we don't lose it. And so we work with governments and partners all around the world. I think that we are probably the most cutting edge when it looks at cutting edge conservation related technologies.

Taylor Wilson:

So I mentioned science fiction at the top. We've all seen Jurassic Park. I'm sure you're maybe tired of these-

Ben Lamm:

People, I'm surprised there's a Jurassic Park question. We've never heard that.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, I'm sure that is a new one for you, sir. Where do you land on the ethics of all of this, of de-extinction and some of the conversations we're having?

Ben Lamm:

Yeah, I mean, obviously we think it's unethical not to do this. We are eradicating species as humans at an alarming rate. We're changing our climate at an alarming rate. We are cutting down forest and doing deforestation. We are polluting our planet with plastics at an alarming rate. And so we need new opportunities for this. And I think synthetic biology does that. And to the Jurassic Park question, which we have, we do get variants of that from can we make dinosaurs to all these types of different questions that we get over the years. What I think people still have to remember is that while Jurassic Park was a dystopian movie, very entertaining, did quite well at the box office, and I enjoyed it as obviously millions of others did worldwide, but what we're really doing is de-extinction for the purpose of species preservation. I don't think that they had the same goals in mind at Jurassic Park as ours, but I do think that one of the benefits that did come from the film is the art of the possible in inspiring people, in educating people on the power of genetic engineering.

Taylor Wilson:

There is some pretty heady claims about what Colossal will do on your website, including save us our planet and the species that inhabit it. I'm curious about that. How so?

Ben Lamm:

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think that it's better to have a de-extinction toolkit and not need it than not have a extinction toolkit and absolutely need it. And these keystone species that exist are critical to our way of life. When you remove keystone predators and herbivores from their environments, you start to have a cascading effect where you have downgrading occur and you have loss of other biodiversity. You have loss of plant fauna. You have entire rivers and streams that actually change the shape, as we've seen in Yellowstone.

And so if we, I don't think Colossal is the silver bullet for saving biodiversity, but I do think that we're one thread of hopefully a tapestry of collaborators and technologies around the world that can be leveraged for conservation. And I think that we have to act now. I think that people warned us for quite some time about the impending impacts of human caused climate change and I think a lot of people didn't listen and now people are starting to listen. Biodiversity is an existential threat to our way of life here on the planet and so I hope that there's 1000 Colossals out there building tools and technologies for conservation and saving species.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Ben Lamm is co founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences. Fascinating work and a great conversation. Thank you, Ben.

Ben Lamm:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Baby. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@USAtToday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.