The idea of scientists bringing pre-historic creatures back to life with some clever DNA trickery might sound familiar to fans of the 1993 Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park.
But for Colossal Biosciences – a company that hopes to reintroduce extinct species such as the dodo and the mammoth – it is more than just a film script.
It’s a reality – and one that could be just years away.
“We’ve got all the technology we need,” says Ben Lamm, chief executive of the firm, based in Dallas, Texas.
“It is just a focus of time and funding. But we are 100% confident [we can bring back] the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, and the mammoth.”
The science behind the project is simple: Work out the genes that make an extinct animal what it is, and then replicate those genes using the DNA of a close existing relative.
“It’s almost reverse Jurassic Park,” says Mr Lamm, speaking to Sky News.
“In the film, they were filling in the holes in the dinosaur DNA with frog DNA.
“We are leveraging artificial intelligence and other tools to identify the core genes that make a mammoth a mammoth and then engineering them into elephant genomes.”
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That is the technical part.
But there are some other practical hurdles for Colossal to overcome, namely how, once you have mammoth cells, do you birth a real-life mammoth?
The answer, according to Colossal, is in the womb of an Asian elephant.
But it is a process that could take nearly two years, even after they have worked out how to do it.
“[Each of the] different projects [the mammoth, dodo, and Tasmanian tiger] have different challenges – the mammoth is really around gestation – which is around 22 months,” says Mr Lamm.
“The dodo gestation is pretty great – we are using surrogate chickens. The hardest part is cultivating the primordial germ cells.”
‘Feeling good about 2028’
So after around 4,000 years of extinction, when could we see the return of the mighty mammoth – a creature that fell victim to human hunting and the changing conditions brought about by the end of the last Ice Age.
“We are well into the editing phase,” says Mr Lamm.
“We don’t have mammoths yet, but we still feel very good about 2028.”
Away from the lab, led by Eriona Hysolli, Colossal’s head of biological sciences, there are other issues to overcome – including where the newly returned species will live once they are born.
Mr Lamm says the company is already working with local governments, conservation groups, indigenous people groups, private land lowers, and the public at large, to prepare for the animals to be returned to their natural habitat.
“Our ultimate goal is to put all the animals we make back into the wild,” he says.
‘New tools in the fight’ to protect nature
Colossal says the work is not just about rewilding animals previously lost to the world.
The company is currently working with Dr Paul Ling at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, to create a vaccine to eradicate the deadly EEHV virus – which kills around 20% of baby elephants each year.
It is also working closely with the University of Alaska and the University of Stockholm on radiocarbon dating of American mammoths as well as sequencing their genome – the largest study of its type ever undertaken.
Mr Lamm also hopes that, through Colossal’s research, the company can tackle issues facing the world today, including a drop in biodiversity.
“I think we have a duty to this planet that we’ve been given – we are tending towards a loss of up to 50% biodiversity if we don’t do anything,” he says.
“Modern conservation is great, but we need new tools in the fight.
“Work on de-extinction goes hand-in-hand with species preservation, and if Colossal makes a couple of technologies, then maybe it will provide those tools.”
‘Jurassic Park helps people understand our work’
As for the Jurassic Park comparisons, well, there is one small issue, according to Mr Lamm.
In the Steven Spielberg-directed epic, the scientists use DNA embedded in fossilised mosquitoes in amber combined with frog DNA to bring dinosaurs back to life.
“Amber is not a good holder of DNA,” Mr Lamm says.
“But it’s a very entertaining movie and I think Jurassic Park made a lot of people interested in science. I saw it when I was younger and I was like: ‘Wow genetics is cool’.
“It did a lot to explain to the masses that genetic engineering is a thing and something that can be used in powerful ways, and I do think more people understand Colossal because of that.”
The company is also working on a film of its own, and, luckily for everyone, it’s not a dystopian thriller like Jurassic Park.
It has teamed up with award-winning director James Reed, a specialist in nature films, to document its “de-extinction” work.
“It’s really exciting. When you are doing anything bold, it is important to communicate and be transparent, and there’s nothing more transparent than having cameras around all the time,” says Mr Lamm.
Much has been said about the students whose protests have gripped America this past week.
Their cause has been framed in polarising ways. A violent Hamas-sympathising mob? Or peace activists striving for equality?
Within a frenzied spectrum of views and noise, one young student sat down with me for a conversation.
Aidan Doyle, 21, is a philosophy and jazz double major at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
He was arrested early on Thursday morning for being part of an encampment at the university.
He told Sky News he was shocked that the police arrested so many student protesters, despite not intervening in an attack on the protesters by a pro-Israeli group the day before.
He said his arrest had not deterred him from continuing his protest, which he likened to the Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s.
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Mr Doyle rejected the notion, from President Biden, that the protests are not peaceful.
“Graffiti, putting posters up, that’s all peaceful,” he said, commenting on the president’s statement from the White House.
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“I also think that President Biden needs to actually take some introspection and realise that maybe the reason so many of these protests are happening is partially due to him.”
Mr Doyle added: “Protests in general are part of the American spirit. They’re part of being an American. And if we were to just stand around in circles and sing and dance, and pretend everything was fine, then nothing would change and nobody would care at all.
“Part of a protest is causing disruption and causing at least a minor level of chaos that is, again, not violent but that actually disrupts things.”
He denied any accusations of antisemitism, but conceded there is a spectrum of opinion within the movement.
“If you’re going to criticise a movement, I think you have to look at the movement’s goals and their mission, not what fringe members of the group say or do.
“You have to actually look at what we say, what the organisers say, and what is in the mainstream, and what our mission and our goal is: the peace and prosperity of the Palestinian people.”
Asked if he believed in Israel’s right to exist as a country, he said: “I think Jewish sovereignty is incredible. I think it’s an amazing thing.”
He added: “I think that if there is a country for Jewish people that protects the Jewish people, that is of utmost importance, especially with the vile and rampant antisemitism that exists across the world that I see every day and that I try and combat as much as possible.
“But doing that and then simultaneously repressing another group of people, dehumanising them and brutalising them, then the question of whether your state has the right to exist becomes secondary.”
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.