Colossal Biosciences Chief Science Officer Beth Shapiro on Whether Technology Can Save Us From Mass Extinction

With experts suggesting that Earth is hurtling toward its sixth mass extinction event with more than 1 million species at risk of being lost forever, scientists around the globe have been developing innovative ways to safeguard our biodiversity, including Beth Shapiro, chief science office at Colossal Biosciences, who is at the forefront of the de-extinction movement.

Shapiro has always been ahead of the curve. “In 2015, I wrote this book, really laying out all of the steps that one would need to overcome if one were to bring a mammoth or some other extinct species back to life,” Shapiro said in a talk at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech 2024.

“Then, about seven years after I published this book, Ben Lamm and George Church co-founded a company called Colossal with the goal to do exactly what I had laid out in the book. So, of course, Ben called me and said, ‘You should join us. You wrote the playbook,’” she continued.

Founded in 2021 from the idea of rewilding a woolly mammoth, Colossal Biosciences is the world’s first de-extinction company, advancing gene editing and genetic engineering technologies that enable modern species to defend themselves from extinction and provide icons of the past with a gateway to today.

De-Extinction: Can the Woolly Mammoth & Dodo Bird Restore our Ecosystem? | Colossal Biosciences

Shapiro stated that by focusing on reviving the woolly mammoth, dodo, and Tasmanian tiger — three distinct species that went extinct during different periods — the company is developing a wide spectrum of technologies like bioinformatics, artificial wombs, and induced pluripotent stem cells that are applicable throughout the animal kingdom. While its objective is ambitious, the enterprise’s advancements continue to reverberate throughout the fields of biology and conservation.

Colossal’s end goal is de-extinction, but the process likely looks different from what’s imagined. Using state-of-the-art gene editing tools like CRISPR, the company is working with the present-day counterparts of extinct species — the Asian elephant in the woolly mammoth’s case — and altering their DNA to resemble their predecessors.

“We will identify these core traits that make these animals unique and important components of their ecosystems. In some cases, we will augment these traits because ecosystems of today are different from the past, and when necessary, we will add additional evolutionary adaptations to these animals,” Shapiro said during her talk. 

A task like this not only requires the proliferation of countless amounts of an extinct species’ DNA, but requires precise, cellular-level edits to create hybrid cells that can then be cloned into an embryo and implanted into a maternal surrogate for gestation.

“Clearly, this is hard, and there are a lot of hard problems that are here, but the core technologies exist for each of these steps, and as we improve on these technologies and make them applicable to nonmodel organisms, things that aren’t mice or fruit flies, we will develop and innovate across all sorts of disciplines that have clear application to other biological disciplines,” Shapiro explained.

Colossal Biosciences is already seeing these applications in action as its advancements lead us toward de-extinction and actively aid the conservation of some of our most endangered species.

Colossal Biosciences’ Advancements Against Extinction 

Sharing   of its genome with the woolly mammoth, the Asian elephant is an integral part of Colossal’s de-extinction goals and, as an endangered species, has also become a major beneficiary of the company’s groundbreaking achievements.

The firm recently worked with the Houston Zoo to develop and administer a world-first vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus, a dormant virus with a mortality rate of at least 50% in Asian elephant calves. It is also the first to create elephant induced pluripotent stem cells, a crucial aspect to understanding elephant anatomy and physiology and informing their conservation.

Colossal is also heavily invested in the wildlife on the dodo bird’s former island residence of Mauritius, where the company is leveraging its innovations in genomic sequencing and bioinformatics to revitalize populations of the pink pigeon.

This pigeon is an endemic species down to only 500 individuals. Colossal is using historic DNA samples harvested when the pigeon was more biologically resilient to improve its genetic diversity and protect it from the prolonged consequences of inbreeding.

And the organization isn’t just working with species related to its de-extinction goals. Using the same technology that’s being used to develop and nurture woolly mammoth embryos, Colossal has also partnered with the nonprofit consortium BioRescue to save the northern white rhino, one of the most endangered animals on Earth.

“Today, only two northern white rhinos are alive. A mother-daughter pair, both females. Obviously, this would make it difficult for northern white rhinos to reproduce,” Shapiro pointed out.

“However, by isolating egg cells from these females and fertilizing them with sperm from northern white rhinos that died some 10 to 20 years ago, we created embryos that are being used for embryo transfer into southern white rhinos as surrogate hosts, creating a path for northern white rhinos to reproduce even though there are no males alive today,” she continued.

As Colossal continues to make strides toward de-extinction in preparation for its goal to rewild the woolly mammoth by 2028, it continues to find novel applications for its work, including its newfound efforts to rejuvenate American bison populations in accordance with native tribes.

“Bison are our national mammal. They are admired as a symbol of American resiliency. Deploying our de-extinction toolkit to support the conservation and restoration of that species is huge,” said Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm to Cowboy State Daily. 

A Commitment to Ecological Communities 

With harrowing stories of new extinctions coming out each day, Beth Shapiro and Colossal Biosciences believe that we have a commitment to defending the ecological communities that humans have put in the face of extinction.

As the rate of extinction remains 1,000 times higher than what’s considered natural, the toolkit that Colossal is developing provides species with a chance to keep up with environmental changes and form resilient and robust communities — a natural aspect of evolution currently stifled by excess extinction.

In the midst of what many consider the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, the role of de-extinction truly cannot be underestimated, and its importance to conservation is only expanding.

As Beth Shapiro stated at the end of her Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2024 talk, “It is obvious to all of us that extinction is a colossal problem. It’s obvious to me — and hopefully, now to you — that the tools of de-extinction will be part of the solution.”