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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mcmillan" data-source="post: 9630465" data-attributes="member: 6681949">Biochemist checking in here.We know from what the company has told us that these absolutely do not have anything close to the full genome of a dire wolf. They only mutated 20 positions out of ~12 million differences. Of those 20 changes, only 15 were even changes to something that matched the dire wolf  genome. The other 5 were ones they know do not match, but think makes it "look like" a dire wolf. One screenshot I saw but haven't able to find which source it a came from (none of the one's linked here, or a third I've also seen) said that one of those differences was needed to give a white coat, but because the  mutating it to the dire wolf sequence would make it like one that was known to make mammals more  prone to blindness they mutated a completely different gene that would also result in a white coat. Were actual dire wolves prone to blindness? Who knows? Instead were there other mutations that compensated for the effects of that mutation? Who knows.  Did the original mutation even actually result in the same color coat? Who knows? (The New Scientist article says Shapiro said they won't know for a year if it even  has the effect they think it did, much less if it was like the actual  dire wolf). All we know is that Collossal made wolves that they think look like dire wolves and are doing PR telling people it's actually a dire wolf. As for:This isn't the case.  We know there are chemical modifications  made to DNA that affect how some genes are expressed. These modifications can be from environmental exposure, as well as the parent DNA is inherited from. Using wolf DNA with some modifications wouldn't be able  to reproduce any of these effects. We also know there  are some genes that are  influenced by the molecules from the parent egg (and to a lesser extent from sperm). These wouldn't be reproduced to give the same outcome as an actual dire wolf. There are effects of the mother that carries the fetus to term, using a dog surrogate would not reproduce these  effects. Are any of these differences significant for trying to restore extinct populations? Who knows. There  could be ways to test that using living populations, and potentially more recently extinct populations of animals. But those would be less exciting and wouldn't get a cover story on Time magazine.  This is why biologists are cranky about the way this story is being framed and are saying this is basically just a publicity stunt.</blockquote>

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