{"id":19627,"date":"2025-04-11T17:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T13:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/?p=19627"},"modified":"2025-04-11T17:52:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T13:52:38","slug":"scientists-say-they-have-resurrected-the-dire-wolf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/2025\/04\/11\/scientists-say-they-have-resurrected-the-dire-wolf\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Say They Have Resurrected The Dire Wolf"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a piece for CNN’s Call to Earth<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em>Katie Hunt reports that a species of wolf that died out some 12,500 years ago has become the “world’s first successfully de-extincted animal,” according to Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colossal scientists have created three dire wolf pups by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genes of a gray wolf, the prehistoric dire wolf’s closest living relative. The result is essentially a hybrid species similar in appearance to its extinct forerunner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We aren’t trying to bring something back that’s 100% genetically identical to another species. Our goal with de-extinction is always create functional copies of these extinct species. We were focusing on identifying variants that we knew would lead to one of these key traits,”Beth Shapiro<\/strong>, Colossal’s chief science officer told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To achieve its goal, the company created a hybrid genome using CRISPR technology to cut away certain gray wolf gene variants and replace them with traits associated with dire wolves, said Love Dal\u00e9n, a professor in evolutionary genomics based at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University, and an adviser to Colossal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s no secret that across the genome, this is 99.9% gray wolf. There is going to be an argument in the scientific community regarding how many genes need to be changed to make a dire wolf, but this is really a philosophical question,” Dal\u00e9n told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It carries dire wolf genes, and these genes make it look more like a dire wolf than anything we’ve seen in the last 13,000 years. And that is very cool.” He continued, “The way I see this is that they have resurrected the dire wolf phenotype, and we know from the genome that they probably looked a bit like these puppies. To me, it’s a dire wolf in that sense.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a piece for CNN’s Call to Earth, Katie Hunt reports that a species of wolf that died out some 12,500 years ago has become the “world’s first successfully de-extincted animal,” according to Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences. Colossal scientists have created three dire wolf pups by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19631,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19627\/revisions\/19631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}