Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro

Andrew Huberman

Summary

Dr. Beth Shapiro, Chief Scientific Officer at Colossal Biosciences, discusses the science and ethics of de-extinction. She explains how genomic technology, originally developed to study ancient DNA, is now being used to restore extinct traits to living species like mammoths and direwolves. Rather than creating identical clones, the focus is on functional ecosystem restoration and using these engineering tools to save endangered species from extinction by increasing their resilience to environmental threats.

Chapters

  1. 0:00Direwolves and Synthetic Biology
  2. 0:22Introduction to De-Extinction
  3. 0:31Tools for preservation
  4. 0:37Engaging the public
  5. 1:36The role of Colossal Biosciences
  6. 1:40Ancient DNA and Human Evolution
  7. 3:02Understanding Species and Taxonomy
  8. 3:51Biology vs Human Concepts
  9. 4:52Taxonomic confusion
  10. 6:23Biological Species Concept
  11. 10:30Neanderthal admixture
  12. 25:32Identifying human-specific genes
  13. 28:20Immune responses in history
  14. 34:19DNA preservation limits
  15. 39:38Selecting species targets
  16. 49:16The Mechanics of De-Extinction
  17. 49:41The Mammoth example
  18. 59:24Engineering safe traits
  19. 1:00:38Managing populations
  20. 1:04:29Ethical regulatory oversight
  21. 1:11:41Conservation and Future Technologies
  22. 1:14:53Rescuing endangered species
  23. 1:21:41Gene drives and safety
  24. 1:55:31Artificial wombs

Topics covered

  • De-Extinction Strategy
  • Species Concepts

+4 more topics (full content when you follow the channel)

Transcript excerpt

So our direwolves, they have 20 edits that we picked and we sequenced genomes from fossil direwolves. We learned from those genomes what genetic changes made those animals bigger, more robust, light colored in coat and then we engineered those changes into a greywolf genome to recreate the direwolf. You know, I often get the question of why are you thinking about bringing extinct species back to life? Why aren't you thinking about helping living species not become extinct? And the answer is we are doing both. It is the same tools. It's the same technology. It's the same needs. And when we excite people with the idea of mammoths and dodos and thyloines, we get more engagement and enthusiasm and investment in developing the technology that we can use to stop living species from becoming extinct. >> Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for ev…