As a rapidly advancing climate emergency turns the planet ever hotter, the Dallas-based biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences has a vision: โTo see the Woolly Mammoth thunder upon the tundra once again.โ Founders George Church and Ben Lamm have already racked up an impressive list of high-profile funders and investors, including Peter Thiel, Tony Robbins, Paris Hilton, Winklevoss Capital โ and, according to the public portfolioย its venture capital arm released this month, the CIA.
Colossal says it hopes to use advanced genetic sequencing to resurrect two extinct mammals โ not just the giant, ice age mammoth, but also a mid-sized marsupial known as the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, that died out less than a century ago. On itsย website, the company vows: โCombining the science of genetics with the business of discovery, we endeavor to jumpstart natureโs ancestral heartbeat.โ
The embrace of this technology, according to In-Q-Telโs blog post, will help allow U.S. government agencies to read, write, and edit genetic material, and, importantly, toย steerย global biological phenomena that impact โnation-to-nation competitionโ whileย enabling the United States โto help set the ethical, as well as the technological, standardsโ for its use.
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