Texas startup aims to bring back extinct species. No, not dinosaurs

Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, receives the Jurassic Park analogy.

People naturally draw comparisons to the movie about bringing back dinosaurs when your organization is attempting to bring back the woolly mammoth. There’s a catch, though.

Dinosaurs cannot be brought back. Dino DNA does not exist. It isn’t 65 million years long. Amber is not a good carrier for DNA. It has enormous porosity. He said to The Dallas Morning News, “Not that we’ve tried.”

Considering the conclusion of Jurassic Park? However, the idea of de-extinction is just as fantastical whether it involves the resuscitation of Tyrannosaurus Rex, woolly mammoths, dodo birds, or other extinct species.

However, dozens of geneticists, biologists, AI specialists, and others struggle day in and day out to make science fiction a reality at a 25,000-square-foot lab in West Dallas. According to Crunchbase data, the area is home to Colossal, a genetic engineering company that has earned $435 million in investment and just became the first startup in Texas to reach a $10 billion valuation.

According to Lamm, George Church, his co-founder, is mostly responsible for the initiative. Church teaches genetics and health sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and Harvard Medical School.

Lamm initially met Church in 2019 to discuss the nexus between artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Despite lacking a biological background, Lamm has developed several successful technological startups. Lamm posed what ended up becoming a $10 billion question when they started discussing Church’s past endeavors: If you had one project with limitless funding, what would you do?

He says, “I would work to bring back the woolly mammoth,” without missing a beat. To benefit the ecosystem, I would bring it back to the Arctic. Lamm stated, “I would use the technologies to help conservation and human health care, as well as to bring back other species.”

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Lamm and Church launched Colossal in 2021 following a pandemic break, and the objective remains the same: de-extinction for the sake of ecological preservation.

Since 1970, wildlife numbers have decreased by 73%. Approximately 27,000 species become extinct annually, and by 2050, 50% of all species may become extinct.

Although it is reversible, this could have a domino effect on human society by accelerating desertification, increasing food insecurity, causing disease, and decreasing the amount of drinking water.When wolves were brought back to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, the park’s vegetation, beaver population, and streams all improved. De-extinction might achieve comparable results.

Selling investors and even other scientists on such a futuristic idea was first challenging, according to Lamm. However, Colossal has become stronger and more marketable as a result of being open to constructive criticism.

Last Friday, Lamm identifies one of the scientists at the Dallas lab, Love Dalen, a Swedish mammoth specialist. When Colossal first came out, Dalen was one of its most vocal detractors.

We respond to criticism from people like Love Dalen by saying, “Well, they’re the world’s top mammoth researcher.” We ought to give him a call and ask him what we may be doing better. Lamm uttered those words. That has almost always led to the development of a relationship between us.

Dalen did provide them input after Colossal called him, and Colossal took it into consideration. Dalen is currently a scientific adviser to Colossal.Another early skeptic of Colossal, Beth Shapiro, was a molecular biologist with an Oxford education who quit academia to take a position as Colossal’s chief science officer.

Now that Colossal has a wealth of scientific credentials and early payoffs, it has a genuine product to offer investors. Some are in it for the mission, such as Peter Jackson, the filmmaker of The Lord of the Rings, and Victor Vescovo, an explorer from Dallas. Some, however, are involved merely because they believe it to be a wise investment.

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Colossal’s de-extinction technique is referred to by Lamm as a systems model. That implies that the journey from ancient DNA to a fully developed mammoth involves numerous phases spanning numerous scientific areas. Each stage must vertically integrate with every other phase in order to achieve de-extinction, even if a large portion of the technology at each level already exists independently in some capacity.

Innovation takes place there, and profits are generated there as well. De-extinction on a large scale demands far more resources and adaptability than university labs can provide. For this reason, almost all of Colossal’s work is done in a private setting. However, the technology developed during the de-extinction process is valuable in and of itself. Lamm compares it to the landing on the moon.

He claimed that man’s quest for the stars gave rise to technologies related to communication, health care, and the core elements of the Internet.

Two technology firms have already been spun off by Colossal: Form Bio and Breaking, a computational biology platform with applications for human health that creates bacteria to break down plastic. Prior to the spinoffs, investors who held a portion of Colossal currently possess the same stake in those businesses.

Rewilding and the expanding market for biodiversity credits, which are comparable to carbon credits, represent the other value play. In order for businesses to meet emissions targets, carbon credits enable them to buy carbon emissions from carbon offsetters. For instance, if an oil and gas business wishes to release one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it can buy carbon credits, which will subsequently be used to pay a carbon recapture company to remove that ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

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With biodiversity credits, the same idea may be applied to both the loss of biodiversity and the ecosystem as a whole.Colossal can fill the financial gap to help prevent ecosystem collapse, which the World Bank says could cost the global economy $2.7 trillion.

According to Lamm, the rewilding of our species—which we can accomplish on a large scale with the help of artificial wombs—will result in long-term benefits that might total up to $1 billion annually.

All three of Colossal’s de-extinction initiatives have had early success, including the development of genomes for each. The business has successfully created chimera chicks that can bear genetically modified dodo birds for the dodo bird project. Additionally, it has created an artificial uterus that can cultivate the fertilized embryos of the Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial that resembles a tiger and is part of Colossal’s other de-extinction effort.

It’s time to grow now. Currently, Colossal employs 170 researchers in three labs located in Dallas, Boston, and Melbourne. To further advance the de-extinction objective, the company is constructing a unique 45,000-square-foot lab in Dallas.

Regarding skeptics who could bring up Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park Your scientists didn’t pause to consider whether they should because they were so focused on whether they could. Colossal is happy to let the outcomes do the talking.

Even if we’ve witnessed the conclusion of “Independence Day,” we still wish to visit the moon, don’t we? Lamm uttered those words.

Since I’m not horrible at it, I could always go start another software firm if I don’t succeed. However, if we were successful, I thought this was a chance to take action that would truly make a difference.

— The Dallas Morning News’ Sasha Richie

The Dallas Morning News, 2025. Tribune Content Agency, LLC is the distributor.

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