Beth Shapiro
Appearances
Apple News Today
The black-spatula debate changed our kitchens. Companies noticed.
This is really validation that what we have in mind for our longer-term de-extinction projects is really going to work.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
We ask, where are all of the mammoths the same as each other, but different from an elephant? So this is narrowing down the focus on the genes that make mammoths mammoths instead of elephants.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
Here's a difference in a letter in a long string of A's and C's and G's and T's. A genome of a mammoth that we've gotten out of a bone that was preserved in the permafrost in Siberia. It's hard to test that in an elephant because an elephant is pregnant for 22 months and then it takes another decade to 14 years for that elephant to be able to have a baby. Mm-hmm.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
with a mouse model, we can really rapidly test these hypotheses and learn whether this change might be responsible for making the animal woolly. And now I can add that to the list of things that I want to change when I'm editing that elephant cell so that I can have an elephant someday give birth to something that looks more like a mammoth.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
We look in the mouse for those same genes and instances where those genes have been involved with making a woolly coat or longer hair or changing the color of the hair.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
We ended up with some absolutely adorable mice that have longer, woolly, golden-colored coats.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
For us, it's an incredibly big deal. I mean, this is really validation that what we have in mind for our longer-term de-extinction projects is really going to work.
Short Wave
Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice
Our intention is to recreate these extinct species that played really important roles in ecosystems that are missing because they've become extinct. And that is our goal with our de-extinction projects.