Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:27:40 · Ben Lamm
[00:27:40] S2: Yeah. So there's a lot of, direwolf skulls in Libre... La Brea Tar Pit. It's... There's this incredible wall and it's sick, but the problem is there's heat and acidification in those tar pits. So you have to find ancient DNA. So about six years ago, there was a group that Beth Shapiro, my chief science officer, was a part of because they were excited about Game of Thrones that actually sequence got a very little bit of DNA from a single tooth. So you got all these crazy beautiful skulls, but only one tooth from this one k ever produced any viable DNA. So we went back and got that tooth. We also discovered another skull that had been found in a riverbed. So it was not found in La Brea Tar Pits. And we actually took out what's called the petrous bone, which is a bone in the inner ear, like in the back swollen kind of inner ear area That's very, very hard. It doesn't change a lot in development. So it's a great DNA storage vessel. We drill into it. So kinda like what you see in Jurassic Park with Amber, you extract that DNA, you run it through these sequencing machines, and it gives you those letters. Right? Like what mister b... DNA tells you. It gives you this, like, twisted... It tells you the letters or the g n a... DNA code of that animal. But the problem is ancient DNA is very fragmented. It's very old. It's very degraded. So you gotta do lots of sampling, and it's destructive sampling, you gotta be careful with these old specimens. And then you've gotta ensure that you do and get enough passes of the DNA that you have enough that you can then piece together it so that you know enough about the animal that then you can start, looking at, what its closest living relatives is. And then you have to do the exact same thing with the, closest living relative, and then you start to compare it all. So once you start to compare it at all, you start to see what genes, are consistent. So a dire wolf is 99.5% a gray wolf. Most people didn't realize... So some of the negative feedback we got because people didn't do the math was that we have two direwolf samples. One that's 73,000 years old and and, one that's, 13,000 years old. And there's there's more genetic diversity and drift in my two direwolf samples than there is from my second direwolf sample and today with wolves. So Wow. Yeah. And so and so so we...
00:30:02 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
If you can get multiple samples, that's really what you want, and that doesn't... Isn't possible in all species. Like in the mammoth, we have over 70 samples now. But... And so that allows us over, you know, 60,000 of our two direwolf samples to understand what really made a direwolf. What were the exact genes and what what were fixed when we compare it to wolves and other canids? Because there's a lot of there's a lot of variance between those. Like, if if you if you go back in humans from us to sixty thousand years ago, there's a there's a lot of changes. Right? But what are those core things that really kind of kept the human lineage alive? And so once you identify those things, you use a suite of different tools to actually go in and edit the existing donor DNA. In this case, it's the gray wolf because it is the closest genetic relative to the dire wolf. You make those edits, then we use a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is basically Dolly the sheep cloning, where you take the nucleus that's been out of this edited cell, put it in the nucleus of an egg cell, and then we put it actually in a large domestic dog because dogs are roughly... Are are basically wolves. Right? And so a a pug is basically a wolf and... Which is weird. And and then, you know, sixty days later, we we gave birth to our first little puppies. [00:31:26] S1: That's just wild. And you got three of them. Right? [00:31:29] S2: Yeah. We have... Yeah. So we have rimless and remus, and then, we did... Used another cell line and created our first female, Khaleesi.
00:31:29 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
[00:31:29] S2: Yeah. We have... Yeah. So we have rimless and remus, and then, we did... Used another cell line and created our first female, Khaleesi. [00:31:38] S1: Khaleesi, by the way, the names are incredible. Okay. So just, again, like, mind blown. So, basically, you have to get the samples. How much of the samples do you have to get? Like, to be able to have enough of the genetic sequencing? [00:31:52] S2: Great question. It's a... And it... And it's [00:31:54] S1: not Where the heck do you get those samples? Like, is it just things you dig up? Are there some parts at museums? Like... Because my next question is gonna be, like, how many animals can you make? You could get enough samples and still not get enough genetic codes. So, like [00:32:07] S2: Yeah. It's a great it's a great question. Right? So it is a little bit of luck of the draw of what you get, but we get samples kinda from three primary ways. Number one, it's like there's great researchers that have already done the samples. Right? So we have we have people like Love Dalén at University of Stockholm who's who's the number one mammoth researcher in the world, one of our negative critics when we launched the business. Now one of our most active advisers, which I'm very proud of. [00:32:31] S1: Thank you, friends. Yeah. Thank you, new friends.
00:32:31 · Alexa von Tobel, Ben Lamm
[00:32:31] S1: Thank you, friends. Yeah. Thank you, new friends. [00:32:33] S2: My super new friend. And, and so he actually has been going on expeditions, getting mammoth samples, and for mammoth... For his academic research, sampling them. Right? So so there are existing samples that ancient DNA experts have done. Right? So that's category one. Category two is museum samples. Right? Sometimes museums will have samples and we'll go do that. We did that with our thiolacine work with the museum of... The Melbourne Museum where we actually took samples from preserved thiolacine pups in in in in... That were preserved in ethanol. And then the third is, like, straight out of, like, a movie. It's it's expeditions. Right? Where... And I'm a member of the Explorers Club, where you literally, like, go out and, like, look for samples. I... We... I can't say what species you have to give away the animal, but we've been in caves. And like, what's what's funny is that we're doing this direwolf launch and that's been insane. But at the same time, we're, like, going to different places and doing caving and, like, extracting samples of this of this... And finding samples, extracting samples of this other animal. And so some of it is, like, expedition led. So it's, like, catacombs of, like, museums to, like, computers to... That's already been done to, like, out in the, like, Arctic or in a cave.
00:33:49 · Alexa von Tobel, Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
[00:33:49] S1: I mean, Ben, do you even, like, especially since you're only genetically, like, 35 years old, do you pinch yourself and you're like, literally, what am I doing with my life? Like, I mean, if you... It is it is genuinely mind blowing that you are bringing back extinct animals. You're de extincting them, but someone did ask me. They're like, is that a word? And was like, I think Ben made it a word. De extincting. [00:34:12] S2: I think we added, like, the e d and the I n g, but, like, Jurassic Park, like, you know, de extinct... Yeah. De extinction is kind of a thing, I guess. So... [00:34:19] S1: Yes. There you go. [00:34:21] S0: If you are on a startup or you're doing things like managing investors, issuing equity or getting valuations, then we suggest taking a look at Carta. Carta has built an entire connected suite of tools that's designed to help you manage equity, stay compliant with the IRS, and provide unprecedented transparency to your investors. Whether you're hashing out early ownership with your co founders or getting ready to exit, Carta speaks startup. There's a reason they're the industry standard for cap tables, four ninety eight's, and stock comp expense accounting. So if you're not managing equity on Carta already, we recommend you check them out. To learn more or get started, visit carta.com. [00:34:56] S1: So when these three direwolves, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, like, what happens next? I know that you, like, let them grow. I think they were safely being... Like, letting them, you know, actually get big. What happens now?
00:35:13 · Ben Lamm
[00:35:13] S2: We have them on a secure expansive ecological reserve, that's certified by American Humane Society. So going back to, like, the earlier parts of the conversation, it's like, oh, yeah. We need land for these animals. Oh, yeah. We need secure facilities for these animals. Oh, we should probably work with, like, top animal care people. Right? So there's... There are a lot of these things. We... Right before we launched the business, I was... Our chief animal chief animal officer, Matt James, had not joined the company. And I called George. I got an introduction to this guy. They're like, no. He's your guy. He is literally the guy you should have. And and I called George Church. He's like, do you think we should hire someone that's, like, taking care of an elephant before? And and like going back to the naiveness, right, at the early stages. Right? And so it's like, yeah. We should hire someone that's that's actually like birthed elephants, taking care of them, understand herd dynamics and socialization of elephants. Right? So so these are all these things that we've learned along the way. Right? But those... The the the two boys are on the preserve. Khaleesi is about to get integrated into that pack. We will be engineering probably on the low side three, on the high side five, just get the right pack like size. But they live an incredible life. Right? They have 10 full time care professionals there. They also have a... And and we've, like, taken them from, like, bottle feeding to feedings, and now they're doing carcass feeding and then and then probably some predation and some hunting. But it will probably be all some level of managed care for a long time. It's not available to the public or anything. And then our goal is to study them, learn from them, and then also we have built a very long term rewilding plan. But the the rewilding of any species, you have to take indigenous people groups, federal agencies, the public at large. Right? Like, there's some misconceptions about wolves out there in in general. Right? They kinda get a bad rap, but they're incredibly important for the ecosystem. And so they will live out their natural lives on this large ecological preserve, and then potentially future generations could be rewilded if that's what other people want. So we don't push the rewilding agenda. It's that's...