Could de-extincting the dodo help struggling species?
Short Wave
NPR
4.7 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2023
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the second part of our conversation (listen to yesterday's episode), Beth tells Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott that actually cloning a mammoth is probably not going to happen.
"But there are technologies that will allow us to resurrect extinct traits, to move bits and pieces of genes that might be adapted to a large animal like an elephant living in the Arctic."
That is what companies like Colossal Biosciences and Revive and Restore are trying to do, with Beth's help. And she is leading the effort on another iconic extinct species, the dodo.
In today's episode, how Beth Shapiro's initial work mapping the dodo genome laid the groundwork to bring back a version of it from extinction, and how the knowledge scientists gain from de-extinction could help protect species under threat now.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. |
| 0:07.0 | There's that moment, the original Jurassic Park movie. |
| 0:12.0 | When the scientists are driving through the park for the very first time, |
| 0:15.0 | and they see a brachiosaurus walking by their Jeep. |
| 0:24.0 | It's a dinosaur. |
| 0:27.0 | Whenever I watch that scene, I wonder what would that be like |
| 0:33.0 | to see this long, extinct, magnificent creature brought back from the fossil graveyard? |
| 0:40.0 | Unfortunately, it would likely require some movie magic, |
| 0:43.0 | because as we learn from evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro in yesterday's episode, |
| 0:48.0 | the chances of seeing dinosaurs resurrected from their DNA are next to nil. |
| 0:54.0 | Dinosaurs went extinct more than 65 million years ago. |
| 0:57.0 | We're never going to get DNA from something that's that old. |
| 1:00.0 | But there are other iconic extinct animals from the more recent past |
| 1:04.0 | that have been better preserved. |
| 1:06.0 | And as you may have heard, there are people now working to bring some of them back to life. |
| 1:11.0 | This month, the company is looking to bring back the dodo bird from extinction. |
| 1:15.0 | A colossal bioscience that says it'll start like 10 days. |
| 1:18.0 | The colossal also wants to bring back two other extinct animals, |
| 1:20.0 | the woolly mammoths, and the test-maid-anti-integg. |
| 1:23.0 | It's a complicated project using ancient DNA sequencing. |
| 1:27.0 | The end result would be an altered version of the dodo bird. |
| 1:31.0 | Beth Shapiro is involved in a number of these de-extinction projects. |
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