(Image source: Dingding Hippo by Getty Images)
CIA is the latest investor in giant biological science , which hopes to bring mammoth and Tasmanian tiger from extinction using DNA editing.
Mammoths have been extinct for thousands of years, but now the CIA is investing in a biotech company in hopes of bringing them back.
According to news reports, the CIA is funding research on resurrecting extinct animals - including mammoths and tiger-like thyrol .
Through a venture capital firm called In-Q-Tel funded by the CIA, the U.S. intelligence agency has pledged a huge sum of money to a Texas-based technology company Biosciences. According to Colossal's website, the company's goal is to "see again the mammoth thunder on tundra " by using genetic engineering (i.e. using technology to edit the DNA of an organism).
Colossal also expressed interest in resurrecting the extinct thyroid or Tasmanian tiger - a wolf-like marsupial that became extinct in the 1930s - and the extinct dodo .
According to the In-Q-Tel blog post, the CIA is less interested in thunderous mammoths and roaring thyrosses than in the potential genetic engineering techniques that Gilostal intends to develop.
"Strategically, it has nothing to do with mammoths, but with ability," wrote a senior In-Q-Tel official.
De-extinction may sound like science fiction—and to some extent, it does. There is no way to resurrect the mammoth as it did ten thousand years ago. However, by using the DNA editing tool, scientists can insert cold-resistant properties into the DNA sequences of modern elephants, making them genetically similar to mammoths. The resulting creature itself would not be a mammoth; instead, it would be a proxy animal, more like an elephant with the characteristics of a mammoth.
The basis of this process is a gene editing method called CRISPR - the gene "scissors", which scientists can use to cut, paste and replace specific gene sequences in the DNA of an organism. (Several researchers behind CRISPR won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry ).
According to an In-Q-Tel blog post, investing in this project will help the U.S. government “develop ethical and technical standards” for genetic engineering technology and put the U.S. ahead of competing countries that may also be interested in reading, writing and changing the genetic code .
Not everyone is so optimistic about resurrecting extinct animals using genetic engineering tools. According to Gizmodo, critics warn that even if a company can design a healthy proxy mammoth, the mammoth's natural habitat no longer exists—even if it exists, genetic codes cannot teach animals how to thrive in unfamiliar ecosystems. Some scientists also believe that money spent on extinction projects can go further if used to protect live animals.
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