866: Bringing Back Extinct Animals like the Woolly Mammoth and Dodo Bird
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This is episode number 866 on bringing extinct animals back to life.

Welcome back to the Super Data Science Podcast. I am your host, Jon Krohn. Let's start off with a couple quick recent reviews of the show. First one's an Apple podcast review from Raphael Bichesmille, a bioinformatics professional in Virginia. He says, "Thank you for your efforts in making data science accessible to everyone. Whenever I meet a data scientist in the DC area, I always make sure to mention your podcast."

Cool. Thanks, Raphael. Hopefully see you at the RVA Tech Data and AI Summit on March 19th, where I'll be giving the opening keynote. That is in Virginia, where you live. So that'd be cool. Our second review today comes from Ayesha Nassim, who's a senior consultant AI engineer at Ernst & Young in Maryland. She says, thank you for the great work you are doing, helping and inspiring me, me, and many like me. Bye.

I'm honored, Aisha. I'm so delighted to hear that. Thanks to everyone for all the recent ratings and feedback on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all the other podcasting platforms out there, as well as for all the likes and comments on our YouTube videos. If you happen...

To make an Apple podcast review where you type one out, I will read it on air, just like I read today's reviews on air. All right, for this week's five-minute Friday-style episode, I'm diving into a biotechnology story I found mind-blowing, and that's bringing back extinct animals like the woolly mammoth and the dodo bird.

Specifically, today's episode is mostly about a firm called Colossal Biosciences that recently secured a staggering $200 million Series C funding round. What's even more remarkable is the valuation at over $10 billion. That's a nearly seven-fold increase from their previous valuation just a couple of years ago.

Now, you might be wondering, as I certainly did, why investors would pour such enormous capital into a company that hasn't generated revenue yet and whose main projects aren't projected to be completed until 2028. Well, the answer lies in the intersection of technological innovation and commercial potential.

First, let me break down how their de-extinction process works. In the case of collision, they map the entire genome of extinct species like the woolly mammoth. Then they compare the genome of that to a close living relative. In the mammoth's case, for example, that's the Asian elephant. Using CRISPR gene editing technology, if you haven't heard of CRISPR before, I've got a link to that in the show notes.

So yeah, using CRISPR, they modify the elephant's cells to match the mammoth's genetic profile. Finally, these modified cells are placed into an egg and the embryo is implanted into an elephant surrogate mother. To achieve their ambitious de-extinction goal, Colossal has developed numerous breakthrough technologies. One of the most interesting is their artificial womb technology because it isn't just about bringing back extinct species, it has the potential in human fertility treatment and healthcare as well.

With a bit of context on Colossal's tech in our back pocket, let's now get into the three key ways that they're creating commercial value. First, they're spinning off technology companies. They've already launched two successful ventures, Breaking, which uses biological microorganisms to break down plastic waste into harmless organic matter, and another firm called FormBio, a computational biology platform for developing gene therapies.

These spinoffs have already secured millions in additional funding. The second business model is Colossals collaborating with governments on conservation projects for endangered species. For example, the northern white rhinoceros technically isn't extinct, but there are only two left and they're both female. So that's a place where Colossal could make an impact. And third, finally, Colossals positioning themselves to enter the emerging biodiversity credits market. This is something like carbon credits, but for biodiversity restoration.

A lesson for me about this story is how it demonstrates the exponential value of ambition paired with technological innovation. When you set out to solve really ambitious, really hard problems like bringing back extinct species, you can develop solutions that have widespread applications across multiple industries, like the artificial wombs for human fertility and the cleanup of plastic waste that I mentioned above.

Each one of the indirect applications Colossal has developed while pursuing their core mission of de-extinction could have such a large impact on their own that each could eventually generate billions of dollars of revenue.

From a data science perspective, Colossal's work is a perfect example of how computational biology, genetic algorithms, and advanced data analysis are transforming what we thought was possible. The company's work combines massive genomic datasets, machine learning for genetic analysis, and precision gene editing technologies to potentially jaw-dropping effect. Perhaps it won't be too long before you can head to a zoo to see a woolly mammoth.

What other animals other than woolly mammoths are candidates for de-extinction? Well, we probably won't have a Jurassic Park like in the film series because well-preserved DNA samples are critical for de-extinction. We also need a closely related living species that can serve as a surrogate in a suitable habitat needs to still exist for the de-extincted animal to be reintroduced into. So yeah.

Probably no dinosaurs, but some other candidate animals include the dodo bird and the Tasmanian tiger, both of which are active colossal projects.

And there's also a passenger pigeon project, which is being tackled by a different firm called Revive and Restore. Other potential animals that we could de-extinct include the Caribbean monk seal, the quagga, a subspecies of plains zebra, the great auk, which is a flightless bird from the North Atlantic, and the heath hen, which is a subspecies of prairie chicken. Pretty wild, no?

Whether de-extinction ends up working out or not, the big mission is bringing us a slew of other biotechnological innovations, which brings me back to my inspirational thought of the week. Sometimes, the most valuable innovations come not from trying to solve immediate market needs, but from pursuing seemingly impossible dreams.

What seemingly impossible goals could you be dreaming up to tackle by leveraging the exponential technologies that are available at your fingertips? Thanks to AI, your dreaming could be computationally augmented, if you like, potentially to great effect. If you don't already have some impossible goals in mind, you can head to your favorite conversational AI interface. As of the past few weeks, that might be OpenAI's deep research or Google's deep research features, which are tremendously powerful for big questions like this, and I've got links to those in

in the show notes for more information. And maybe we'll have an upcoming episode about them too. All right, that's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed it or know someone who might consider sharing this episode with them, leave a review of the show on your favorite podcasting platform, tag me in a LinkedIn or Twitter post with your thoughts. And if you aren't already, obviously subscribe to the show. Most importantly, however, I just hope you'll keep on listening. Until next time, keep on rocking it out there. And I'm looking forward to enjoying another round of the Super Data Science Podcast with you very soon.

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