Now there is a plan to save them—or at least their genetic material. On June 25, Colossal Biosciences—the Dallas-based company that last year de-extincted the dire wolf and aims to bring back more lost beasts including the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, and the woolly mammoth—announced that it is partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to collect and freeze cell and tissue samples of every species on the list. The goal is to establish something of a library of the species’ genomes in case they ever have to be de-extincted or, in the alternative, if their populations dwindle so far that more heartiness or genetic variability needs to be gene-edited into the survivors.
“This collaboration will help advance our understanding of how biobanking and genomics can help complement existing conservation tools and contribute to the recovery and long-term resilience of imperiled species,” said Fish and Wildlife’s Director Brian Nesvik in a statement.
Against this onrushing die-off, Colossal and Fish and Wildlife are hoping to hold the line at least a little bit. The two began having discussions about an effort of this kind five years ago. The government agency was aware of a frozen biobank Colossal was already establishing in its Dallas headquarters—where tissue and cell lines of some 200 species so far are kept preserved in a liquid nitrogen bath at -274°F. That collection, however, was not specific to the species on the official endangered list and Fish and Wildlife was interested in seeing such an inventory take shape.
That’s not easy. For one thing, there’s the matter of collecting samples—no small thing when species are endangered in the first place and must be handled in as noninvasive a way as possible. Blood draws and skin biopsies are pretty much the limit of what Colossal scientists can do in the field. That’s fine, but it constrains the kinds of cells available for collection. Ideally, organ cells and gametes—egg and sperm—would be gathered too. Colossal thus stays alert for the remains of endangered species found in the wild and deaths in zoos willing to work with the company.
Before putting these samples on ice, Colossal and Fish and Wildlife will also be fully sequencing the cells to create a complete digital record of the animals’ genomes. They also hope to engineer some of the cells so that they revert to an embryonic stage of development known as induced pluripotent stem cells, blank biological slates that can be engineered again to become any type of cell in the body—bone, muscle, heart, digestive, eye, egg, ovum, and more.
The new collaboration will not keep its samples and its sequences to itself. The biobank will be open-sourced to labs and universities around the world that may be doing similar conservation and de-extinction work of their own. “Everyone should share in what we have,” says Lamm.
“I don't know if a family that goes in and sees a bio vault that is a bunch of white freezers is going to get excited,” says Lamm. “But you can take some of our reports and put those on cool automated screens, and [visitors] can use robots to pull vials out and see them. I think that that goes a lot further.”
“We can start to figure out what are the genes associated with things like disease mitigation or drought tolerance,” says James. “There are many different ways we can try to engineer nature to be more resilient in the future.”
Whether merely enhanced or fully de-extincted, the listed animals fighting for their lives can be real-world beneficiaries of the public-private deal struck this week. “This is a service to America,” says Lamm. “It’s a global biological vision, [helping animals go] from freezer to free.”
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