After an absence of over 12 thousand years, an ancient predator seems to be back to tread the soil of North America. We are talking about eNOCONMENT (Aenocyon Dirus), better known as to say Wolf (or also a metalpum for fans of the show “The throne of swords”), a canide lived in the northern America of the late Pleistocene, and went extinct, together with the megafauna of which it feeds, at the end of the last large glaciation. The news comes from Colossal Biosciences, a US company engaged in a crusade to bring some of the most iconic species of the past back to life, such as woolly mammoths or Dodo. And that seems to have achieved its first success: a “litter” of enquenced produced by recreating their ancient DNA on the scaffolding of that of their strictest living relative, the gray wolf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpx4tm-j2bu
The three puppies – two six -month males called Romolo and Remo, and a younger female, born in January and renamed Khaleesi (such as the mother of the dragons of the show, just to make the reference to the metalpies of George Martin more evident – currently would be in perfect health, hosted in a fenced area of 800 hectares in a non -specified place of the United States. Of the common gray wolves: at six months of age the two males would weigh about 36 kilos, about six times more than a tank of the same age.
At 6 months of age 36 kilos weigh
All characteristics written in the ancient genome of the enopioni, together with a wider head, more pronounced and even thicker shoulders. Or at least, this is what Colossal Bioscens researchers assert. In fact, the company would have used the sequenced genome by two fossils dating back to 13 thousand and 72 thousand years ago, whose characteristics rewrite, at least in part, what we thought we knew about this species. As explained interviewed by Wired.com The molecular biologist Beth Shapiro – which since last year has been working as scientific director for Colossal Biosciences – the new analyzes awaiting publication in a scientific journal would have shown that the enquences are not, as deemed previously, close relatives of African jackals. But rather, a species born from the intersection of two wolf populations that occurred between 2.5 and 3.5 million years ago, closely related to modern gray wolves, and characterized by a practically white fur (at least the specimens used for sequencing).
The genome extracted from the two fossils was used as template to identify the traits that differentiated these ancient animals from the current gray wolves. Using genetic editing, therefore, the company researchers would have made 20 changes out of 14 genes of the DNA of wolves, and therefore transferred the genetic material within oocytes of gray wolf, and implanted the embryos thus obtained in a surrogate mother (large metic dogs).
How genetic editing works
Once the pregnancy is completed, those that Colossal Biosciences defines the first specimens of enoconal of the last 12,500 years were born. The goal of the company is to obtain an entire pack, so as to be able to study its ecological behaviors and characteristics, and to start imagining their reintroduction in the environment that lived in the distant past (a process that obviously will have to overcome different obstacles, bureaucratic and scientific, before being able to really be put into practice).
In the meantime, there are those who point out that animals are – technically – genetically modified gray wolf specimens: the genome is still, at 99.9 percent, that of the current wolves, and would therefore not be correct to define them enquence, despite resembling this extinct species both genetically and for their physical characteristics. In the future, Colossal Biosciences has declared that it plans to also try the creation of specimens obtained using 100 percent the DNA reconstructed by the fossil samples of enoconio. For now they respond to the criticisms admitting that if an animal looks like an enoconal and behaves like an enocono, it is enough for them. And regardless of how you think, it is difficult not to look forward to the next episode: the “de extinction” of the Mammut, a program that should produce the first puppies around 2028.