Part of the grassland ecosystem once home to the woolly mammoth is what we know today as the Arctic tundra. Dr. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard University believes that bringing back the woolly mammoth, which went extinct around 4,000 years ago, can restore the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem.
And that restoring this ecosystem could help slow the melting of permafrost in the Arctic, reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and stave off climate change.
Dr. Church, who is known as a pioneer of both genome sequencing and gene editing, was instrumental in developing technology to read and write ancient DNA, and has been working on this project to genetically-engineer the woolly mammoth for years.
His plans for de-extinction of the woolly mammoth involve combining parts of its genetic code with the Asian elephant—its closest living relative—and gestating the embryos in artificial wombs or a surrogate African elephant.
Using gene editing technology, CRISPR, resurrecting woolly mammoths to “walk the Arctic tundra again” is the first focus of his bioscience and genetics company, Colossal.