Church’s proposal caught the attention of the press, but failed to secure funding in excess of the $ 100,000 provided by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The lab took advantage of other experiments better funded by mammoth research. “This set of tools can be useful for many purposes, whether it is for extinction or for recoding the human genome,” Hysolli commented.
By analyzing the genome of the woolly mammoth obtained from fossils, Hysolli and his colleagues compiled a list of the most important differences between these animals and elephants. They concentrated on 60 genes that, according to their experiments, are important for producing the distinctive features of the mammoth such as the hair, fat and skull surrounded typical of the woolly mammoth.
“Honestly, I was thinking about working hard, but at a slow pace,” Church commented. However, in 2019, he was contacted by Ben Lamm, the founder of Texas-based artificial intelligence company Hypergiant, who was very interested in the news about the idea of extinction.
Lamm visited Church in his lab and they became friends. “After being in the lab for about a day and having a good time with George, we were very excited to try to get it,” Lamm commented.
Lamm began to establish Colossal to sponsor Church’s work, from modifying DNA to finally achieving the return of “a functional mammoth,” as Hysolli calls it, to nature.
The company’s initial funding comes from investors such as Climate Capital, a privately held company that funds initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, and the Winklevoss twins, famous for their investments in bitcoins and their legal battles over Facebook.
Scientists will try to make an elephant embryo with its genome modified, in such a way that it resembles a primitive mammoth. To achieve this, researchers will have to remove the DNA from an elephant egg and replace it with a DNA similar to that of the mammoth.