Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

CLIMATE EMERGENCY

Church to de-extinct woolly mammoths

Nature Biotechnology volume 39, page 1171 (2021)Cite this article

Getting there involves 11 steps, starting with sequencing the woolly mammoth genome and ending with placing live animals on Earth. In between, the team will be identifying the genes that make a woolly mammoth (compared with an elephant, its closet genetic relative), editing those genes into an elephant embryo using CRISPR, and gestating the gene-edited embryo to term. Church’s team, which up until now had been working with very little funding, has identified 60 genes that confer mammoth-like features — some of which, such as those that confer cold tolerance, will be edited in. In another Church start-up, e-Genesis, 42 genes have been edited in pigs to make their organs available for human transplantation — a proof of concept for the approach.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nature Biotechnology https://www.nature.com/nbt

    Laura DeFrancesco

Authors
  1. Laura DeFrancesco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

DeFrancesco, L. Church to de-extinct woolly mammoths. Nat Biotechnol 39, 1171 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-01096-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-01096-y

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing