When CEO Ben Lamm steps into the spotlight, it’s usually to talk about his efforts bringing extinct animals back to life. Once a far-flung idea, Lamm and the company he heads, Colossal Biosciences, have proven they can pull it off.
That wow-inducing moment came last year when Colossal unveiled “dire wolf” pups created with gene engineering techniques that leveraged a rewritten genome made from preserved DNA.
Born with 20 dire wolf traits, the modified gray wolves now boast large, muscular frames, sharper teeth and a distinctive howl that’s been absent from earth for over 10,000 years. But the fair-haired canines are just the tip of what Lamm and Colossal hope to achieve.
Similar to the way NASA’s effort to launch humans into space once triggered a frenzy of technological advances in areas like energy production and materials science, Colossal bills its…