{"id":25499,"date":"2025-04-07T16:33:23","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T16:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25499"},"modified":"2025-04-07T17:24:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T17:24:42","slug":"scientists-revive-the-dire-wolf-or-something-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25499","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Dire wolves, made famous by \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d went extinct some 13,000 years ago. Now, researchers have bred gray-wolf pups that carry genes of their ancient cousins.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction<\/a>. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.<\/p>\n

The result is three healthy wolves \u2014 two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi \u2014 that have some traits of dire wolves.<\/p>\n

They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion<\/a> in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, described the wolf pups as the first successful case of de-extinction. \u201cWe\u2019re creating these functional copies of something that used to be alive,\u201d she said in an interview.<\/p>\n

The animals will remain in captivity. But the technology that the company has developed could potentially help conserve species that have not yet gone extinct, such as the critically endangered red wolf<\/a>, which is largely limited to North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dire wolves, made famous by \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d went extinct some 13,000 years ago. Now, researchers have bred gray-wolf pups that carry genes of their ancient cousins.For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201dIn 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.The result is three healthy wolves \u2014 two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi \u2014 that have some traits of dire wolves.They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, described the wolf pups as the first successful case of de-extinction. \u201cWe\u2019re creating these functional copies of something that used to be alive,\u201d she said in an interview.The animals will remain in captivity. But the technology that the company has developed could potentially help conserve species that have not yet gone extinct, such as the critically endangered red wolf, which is largely limited to North Carolina.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25501,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25502,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499\/revisions\/25502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}