The ‘dire wolf’ dilemma

“We are living in a weird time,” Ben Lamm told the podcaster Joe Rogan recently. “The ability to engineer drought-resistant crops or a vaccine or regrow our hair or, you know, make mammoths — that’s today. We can’t even think about what’s tomorrow.” Lamm is the Sam Altman of synthetic biology: an enthusiast, a hype-machine, a man intent on owning the future. His company, Colossal Biosciences, wants to imitate extinct species such as the mammoth, the thylacine and the dodo. It has been valued at $10.2bn. Last month, it announced it had bred “woolly mice” — editing mice genes to create long-haired pups. Now it says it has bred three animals that resemble dire wolves, a species that diverged from grey wolves at least 2.5mn years ago and became extinct about 12,000 years ago. Colossal’s homage to Jurassic Park (or Jurassic Bark) has impressed at least some scientists, although others are scathing and yet more want it to publish its data. And while some researchers’ forays into genetically

“We are living in a weird time,” Ben Lamm told the podcaster Joe Rogan recently. “The ability to engineer drought-resistant crops or a vaccine or regrow our hair or, you know, make mammoths — that’s today. We can’t even think about what’s tomorrow.” Lamm is the Sam Altman of synthetic biology: an enthusiast, a hype-machine, a man intent on owning the future. His company, Colossal Biosciences, wants to imitate extinct species such as the mammoth, the thylacine and the dodo. It has been valued at $10.2bn. Last month, it announced it had bred “woolly mice” — editing mice genes to create long-hair