ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A biotechnology company says it's moving forward on a plan to bring the wooly mammoth back from extinction.
Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based biotechnology company, says it has developed the technology necessary to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction.
Dino Grandoni, who is the Washington Post-Wildlife, Biodiversity and Climate Reporter, joined Total Information A.M. Tuesday to discuss the company's mission to bring back extinct animals like the wooly mammoth
"Basically they want to take the cell of a closely related animal, in the case of the wooly mammoth, it be an elephant, and edit the genes in that cell in order to bring back characteristics of the mammoth," said Grandoni. "Based on our understanding of the wooly mammoth based on fossils found in Siberia and elsewhere, they want to be able to take the elephant and basically edit it to where it is close a mammoth as we can possibly get."
Grandoni was asked what was Colossal's purposes to want to bring back the wooly mammoth, he points out that it could be just pure scientific curiosity or a way to counter global warming.
"It would be a great achievement to bring back an extinct animal given how humans are putting so much pressure on wild plants and animals and causing them to go extinct," said Grandoni. "It would be a measure to reverse that and undo the damage that humanity is causing to them."
