This article was originally published on Northeastern Global News by Tanner Stening.
The reported resurrection of the long-extinct dire wolf is a significant scientific development, but the animal appears more like a genetically altered gray wolf and not the species that existed thousands of years ago, a Northeastern expert says.
“There is real technological innovation here,” says Ronald Sandler, a professor of philosophy and director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University.
“It’s a genetically modified gray wolf that has some amazing genetic and morphological features because they’ve not been instantiated for thousands of years,” he says. “But the important question to ask is not whether these are dire wolves, but rather how these biotechnology innovations advance ongoing conservation efforts for existing species.”
Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences, a biotechnology company, claimed to have resurrected the long-extinct species that’s famous for having been featured in the popular television series “Game of Thrones.”
Images of three snow-white pups have been circulating online as proof of a groundbreaking experiment in gene-editing. The company credits breakthroughs in the fields of “computational biology, genome engineering, embryology and stem cell reprogramming” as helping its purported mission of preserving the world’s biodiversity.
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