So can we vote for Dire wolves now? (I know they are grey wolf based hybrids including jackle, red wolf, timber wolf, and artic fox dna arcoding to some sources idk how accurate that entire list is so please correct me) but still š
Nah, those arenāt Dire Wolves, sorry. š
What Colossal Biosciences did was examine some Dire Wolf (Aenocyon dirus) DNA and edited 14 genes of Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) DNA to match it. They even made sure to make the animals white, using a coat coloration gene expressed in Domestic Dogs, because they believe Dire Wolves would have been white (based on no published evidence; Dire Wolves were a temperate species and their coloration was more likely similar to jackals or Dholes).
DNA contains millions of genes. You can not make 20 changes in only 14 genes and have a whole other species, let alone a whole other genus.
Despite what the company is claiming, Gray Wolves are not the closest relatives of Dire Wolves, which we know from a (peer-reviewed) DNA study done in 2021. They are more close to jackals, African Wild Dogs, and Dholes than they are to wolves. Despite being around the same size, they do not share ā99.5%ā of the DNA of Gray Wolves; there are hundreds of thousands of genetic differences between the species.
What Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi are are three Gray Wolves that have been genetically modified to look like pop culture āDire Wolvesā from a TV Show. They do not contain any Dire Wolf DNA and they can not and will not fill the same niche that Dire Wolves did.
Apparently, Colossal is doing legit conservation work alongside their clickbait-y work, and they use the sensationalized concepts to get funding from rich idiots and celebrities. If they can get some Elon-Musk-awesomebro-type to fund their āDire Wolf de-extinctionā, they can use that money to clone critically endangered Red Wolves (Canis rufus) on the side.
Personally, I do not trust them. What theyāre doing is shady and irresponsible, and even if itās bringing in money for conservation itās still misleading and misinforming the public about how DNA works and about how irreversible extinction actually is. Itās taking money that could be used to save the animals we still have, and instead using it to make a hairy Asian Elephant and claim that itās a Mammoth.