Digital Social Hour
Ben Lamm: The Truth About Jurassic Park & Real De-Extinction | DSH #1586
24 Oct 2025
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Why is there no dinosaur DNA available for de-extinction?
there is no dino dna because the earth went through various heating periods since extinction of the dinosaurs also dna like right now the oldest dna we're working with is about 1.5 million years old it's not 65 million years that's a big jump amber's a very porous material it develops in very hot places wet places that's not good for dna storage so there is no amber dna there is no dino dna
Okay, guys, we got Ben Lam here. We are at AI4 conference. He's speaking tomorrow. I bet you're revealing something exciting. Yeah, well, I don't know if there's any big reveals, but I'm, you know, I'm pretty open book. So an AI is critical to what we do at Colossal. So I'm pretty stoked about tomorrow. Yeah. How are you using AI at Colossal mainly?
Yeah, I mean, we use AI in every single part of the project. Most people don't realize that. They think of us just being like you know, in a lab, but there's a lot of field work. There's expeditions. It's kind of weird.
It's kind of like Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, but then there's also this huge AI component that people don't realize we're using AI for everything from like ancient DNA assembly to comparative genomics to we've actually built some pretty cool models where if we're looking at things like skull morphology, like for the Dodo, we've actually scanned over a
thousand different skulls from a bird beak morphology perspective from all these birds. Then we've sequenced them.
Then we use AI to compare all of the actual images to that sequence data to then relevance rank, you know, the biggest gene variants that we think will drive kind of that morphology that made kind of the beak and cranial facial development of the dodo actually look like the dodo, right? That was actually unique to them. And so we're using AI all the time.
Another thing that we're doing that's pretty cool with AI is that most people just use like, think if it's like CRISPR or think if it's like gene editing, it's kind of like a catchall. But really we use a combination of tools. Sometimes it's like little edits to one genome. Sometimes it's synthesizing an entire block.
Sometimes it's like inserting that block, sometimes it's knocking out that block. And all these different technologies have different kind of off-target effects, and we try to bundle them, and that's what's called multiplex editing, when we're editing multiple parts of the genome at the same time.
We've actually built an algorithm because we're creating so many cell lines and screening so much data that we then feed that back into this loop so that we can understand which types of edits make the highest efficiency for that type of effect. without causing this disruption downstream in the genome. And all that's using AI. That's crazy.
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Chapter 2: How is AI utilized in the de-extinction process?
Well, I mean, just being able to look at and run to get to the point that we can actually run simulations of genome engineering, because we're not there yet from a compute perspective.
We're not there that from an AI or a data perspective, but we're generating so much data that if we could actually run simulations in real time of all the possible variants and all the possible outcomes, I think you'd at least give us some high degree of probability of like what that simulated outcome could be without us even having to do any of the wet lab experiment. Wow. Yeah.
So, I mean, we're not there yet because the tech's not there yet, but I think that, you know, in the next five to 10 years, well, that's where we'll be is like, uh, there was some really interesting, there's a story that came out, um, a couple of weeks ago and they, they weren't using quantum, but they actually did a mock. They called it a mock trial.
like a mock clinical trial, which I think is a weird, I think it kind of like almost belittles what they did, but they took all this data for cancer drugs. And then they actually found out that these drugs that are already approved by the FDA and being treating different types of cancers actually can help with Alzheimer's and these other conditions, right?
And so we know those drugs are safe because they're already being deployed and they've already gone through the clinical trial process and they're being deployed and stamped by the FDA for safety and efficacy in humans, right? They're just being used to treat another disease.
And so this company used all this data to go back and say, oh, these same drugs could be used and have a higher degree of outcome to actually help with Alzheimer's and dementia, which is really interesting because And so think about that.
We have so much data already that if we can start looking at using AI and then eventually using quantum plus AI, we can simulate so many different disease states and so many different potential editing outcomes and different drug trials that we probably have.
It reminds me of that story where, I don't know if you read this like five years ago, where NASA had already found other exoplanets and it was just in the data, but they never had the compute power to go back and look through it. Wow. And I think that exists probably for human health care as well. So they already found other exoplanets? I didn't even know that. Yeah, it's crazy. That is nuts.
Yeah, I'd imagine this simulation is going to be important as you start reintroducing these species back into the wild, right? Exactly. And we're trying to, and that's another big, this is a great question. Most people don't think of that as a data problem. But all the work that we do for Colossal that has an application to conservation We open source for the world, right?
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Chapter 3: What are the challenges of recreating extinct species?
So you would put it into an elephant. Asian elephant. Asian elephant. And that would turn into a mammoth. Yeah, and that's kind of like all of our kind of 1.0 of these species, right? Long term, we want to use artificial wombs. So we actually have numerous artificial womb projects going on at Colossal and with one of our partners at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
And so we're working on non-placental mammals, so things like marsupials, right? We're working on placental mammals, so we're starting with the mouse, right? So it's like, how do we grow a mouse foliac's utero? That's only 23 days gestation versus 22 months. And when our first elephants will be born, they'll be 300 pounds.
So different challenges, but fundamental biology has to be solved for us to even scale from mouse to pig to then eventually species that grow into elephants, right? And then we even have an artificial egg construct that we're working with, you know, so that we can grow eggs fully. Wow, without the two animals mating?
No, with the two animals mating and having the eggs so that we get kind of those core PGCs that are edited. but then extracting them and putting them in a, so it's kind of a gen two. The problem with some of the avian work is you kind of have two generations because you have to create these first genetically modified birds that are sterile. And then they have to mate to produce that first egg.
But then from that, you can take those and then do everything else in a synthetic egg. Holy crap. So it won't get rid of the entire process, but it'll get rid of half the process for gestation. And it's also super helpful for scale, right? So imagine a world where we don't have to breed thousands of Gen 1 and Gen 2 dodos. We can do all of that in ex-futuro eggs. Wow.
Who would have thought 10 years ago that an artificial womb would be possible this quick? Yeah, and what's crazy is, I mean, we're not there yet, so we don't have one, but I do think that we're on path to have one in the next few years. Now, we're not going to be growing mammoths in the next few years, but I think in the next 5 to 10, it's highly likely that we could. Nice.
What did mammoths eat back in the day? Oh, just like they were foragers, right? So they took, they ate grasses and shrubs and they even would not, if there were trees, they'd knock down trees in some of the locations and take the foliage from the, from kind of that canopy structure. Okay. Yeah. So they were mostly, you know. So they didn't eat meat? No, they were, they did not eat meat. Wow.
Yeah. And that was the main, was that the main reason you started the company was to bring them back? So my, so the reason I started the company was, you know, I built a handful of software companies. I love software. And I met this guy, George Church, who's arguably the father of synthetic biology. But George was like, you know, we could bring back mammoths.
We can rewild mammoths and help the ecosystem.
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Chapter 4: How does Colossal plan to bring back woolly mammoths by 2028?
What if we get people really excited to say, I want to go be a genetic engineering major or I want to go and be a biologist or a conservation biologist? So it kind of was like the perfect project for me, even though I have no background in biology whatsoever. Yeah. So that was the only gap. That's a smart way to get kids interested because every kid loves animals, right? Yeah. They love animals.
Every week we get like pictures of like mammoths and dodos. Now we're actually getting direwolves, which is pretty cool. Pictures from parents and their kids and even from classrooms telling us how excited they are about what we're working on. Yeah. how fulfilling was it to recreate that dire wolf? Oh, it was awesome.
You know, the heart, some of the hard thing about us is like, we try to balance like, uh, full transparency, uh, but also at the same in, in impact, but at the same time, you know, we, we want to think about like how and when we message these things. Right. And so for us, uh, it was funny. We, we, we launched the woolly mouse at South by Southwest. It kind of broke the internet.
And then we're like, Man, people are going to get really excited about these dire wolves if that's the case of what we saw with the mouse. And so the hard thing is when we announced the wolves to the world, they were four and five months old. And so it was hard to keep that project under wraps and a secret because we were so excited about telling everyone about what we were working on.
But when we finally got to rip the bandaid off and show the world, it was crazy. I feel like we could make a movie about just the first five days of launch because everything that could have happened did happen. And that launch was insane. I bet. Yeah, there's probably a lot of fires behind the scenes, I'd imagine. Oh, yeah. We had the New Yorker break the embargo.
And then we had a lot of our press friendlies that we'd worked with for years call us and say, you know, why would you not tell us the biggest news? And like, no, no, no, we were going to call you. We're going to share it today. And then like our scientific paper wasn't live. So then people were arguing that dire wolves weren't close. Their closest living relatives wasn't wolves. It was jackals.
It's like, no, no, that paper is old. We have new data. And we were like, we were trying to answer questions and like get a website. Like our website. So like, like fucking Latin on it when we want, like, it's like, they were selling like people were like, you do realize that there's Latin on page 17 of your website. I was like, okay, great. We'll go fix it.
It's like, but it was a, it was a crazy, it was a crazy five days. I mean, to me, that's a good sign because you're just so focused on the mission. You're not worried about a website. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I mean, I would have, you know, we want to be, you know, I think that we were pretty thoughtful in terms of like working, you know, with indigenous people groups, conservation groups.
We were everything we did certified by American Humane Society, which the oldest animal rights organization in the world. You know, we even took it to the federal government and got there and like got there. And then like, what's funny is then like on day three, that's when everyone that was like frustrated, we didn't call them or whatever.
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Chapter 5: What ethical considerations arise from de-extinction efforts?
Everyone wants to look at their other version of the story. Everyone, you know, has the other side. Cause you can't, you can't do anything in this world where it's like just good. Right. And so we thought we'd like cross every T and then people were like mad. We talked to the administration. People were like, okay, you talked, you have five indigenous tribes. Why didn't you have 10?
It's like, it's like, okay. You can please some of the people some of the time, but it was crazy. It was really, really great. But at the end of the day, I think if you're not doing something that's like big and bold and like in getting that reaction, well, then you're probably not doing enough. You're not doing something big enough, right? Yeah.
What's the process for like, I guess, legally wise, bringing back an extinct or endangered, helping endangered animals? Like, do you have to get approval? Yeah. Yeah, so there's different approvals for different things, right? And so we have what's called a CITES and a COAST permit. So we've worked really closely with Fish and Wildlife. We work with Department of Interior.
And that allows us to import samples and protect them in biobanks. We're working on a new model around biobanking that's like tissue preservation because it's forecast that we could lose up to 50% of all biodiversity in the next 25 years. Wow. So while we need new tools and technologies for conservation, we need de-extinction tools and technologies, we also need to biobank everything.
It's a lot easier to bring something back if we lose it from living cells than reconstruct it and rebuild as an extinct species for today, right? And so we work with them on that.
Then separately, and this also creates all kind of like weird articles about this, but In-Q-Tel, which is part of the federal government and they're most known for being related to the intelligence community, they're investors in the business. So we constantly brief them. That also creates like crazy conspiracies where people are like, They're creating battle mammoths.
It's like, we're not creating battle mammoths. Let us just make mammoths first, right? And so we work very, very closely with the federal government. We're closely with the USDA, Fish and Wildlife, FDA. And so it's really important just to be transparent because we're working in areas that no one's ever done this. No one's ever kind of worked through this.
all of the applications to synthetic biology as a whole, but specifically like extinct species. And so I think the best thing that we do is we work so closely with so many of these organizations, just keeping them like in the loop that everyone feels comfortable with what we do. Yeah. So you said we're projected to lose 50% of biodiversity. That would affect the average person, I'd imagine.
Yeah, it would affect all of us, right? And so what people don't sometimes realize, and I didn't before I ran this business, is there's this concept of keystone species. And so there are these species that are absolutely critical to the ecosystems, right? And so... If those get removed, well, then it can lead to full degradation of the ecosystem.
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Chapter 6: How does biodiversity loss impact ecosystems?
Right. And so there's an awesome study about Yellowstone where when they remove the wolves themselves, from Yellowstone and Coldham in 1925, the park started to degrade. Now, the park didn't go away, but what happened was all of these different herbivores, like the deer and elk and stuff like that, they started overgrazing. They started overpopulating. They stopped migrating. They got sedentary.
And so they ate everything. The closest food source was along the river. And that's where all of the water was. So they ate all there. Well, then there's no beavers actually kind of work in this like really interesting kind of like circumference of where they build their dams.
Well, then there's nothing that the beavers could then go use that was mature enough from a tree perspective to go build dams. Wow. Yeah. So it's crazy. They've actually mapped that the reintroduction of wolves has actually not only increased biodiversity into Yellowstone, but it's also reshaped rivers in Yellowstone. Holy crap.
Yeah, it's crazy because when I think about it, when a beaver dams at the river, it actually starts to expand. It actually starts to erode the bottom. It actually gets deeper. There's actually cooler water deeper. And so there's actually different types of fish populations. Wow. and frogs and other species of amphibians that can live in that.
So it has this entire trickle effect with just removing that keystone predator. That's so nuts. Yeah, so it's crazy. And nature is pretty awesome at fixing itself, right? And so it's like, if we can just figure out how we work with technology and nature, then I think, you know, humanity will be fine.
Yeah, I can't believe that because you're introducing the apex predator of the area and it's actually helping the... There's been some really interesting studies on the Tasmanian tiger, another project that we're working on, where there's an awful disease that's a transmissible cancer, which is also just terrifying. The words transmissible and cancer are the same thing.
So you can transfer the cancer. Yeah. So there's a transmissible cancer in the Tasmanian devil population. And so what happens is when they feed, they scratch and they bite each other. And they're pretty aggressive little cute animals. Most people think of Tasmanian devils, they think of like Looney Tunes or what it looks like. But they're actually pretty cool animals.
But they're pretty aggressive when they're feeding. And what's interesting, though, is that when they scratch and bite each other, they'll transmit this cancer, this facial tumor disease. It eats away at the face. It's awful. Don't Google it. It's terrifying. You'll die. It's like that's the movie that someone needs to make, right? It's the horror movie. It's terrifying.
Well, what's crazy about that, though, is that predators like wolves, or in this case, the thylacine, they mostly prey on the weak animals.
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Chapter 7: What role do keystone species play in ecosystem health?
the sick and the old right and so it's truly survival of the fittest and so i'm sure there's some luck in there but when predators go out uh to make a kill it's about energy expenditure right so so they're doing some type of internal calculus of can i kill that animal right like they do they you see this in africa with cheetahs is that if they miss so many preys the likelihood that they're going to die is high because the energy expenditure to take down like a gazelle is quite high right and so
They have to be thoughtful and time it right. They have to sneak up right. They got to learn all the right hunting behaviors. But then they also have to ensure that, you know, they're going after the right target to begin with. Right. And mostly it's the young, the sick and the old. Right.
And so when you have an absence of a predator in an ecosystem, it actually has this effect where you get more sick animals as well. And so they're actually doing a huge service to the entire ecosystem, right? And so it's forecasted that if the thylacine still existed, that the Tasmanian devil's facial tumor disease wouldn't even be a thing anymore. How did they get wiped out?
Hunting, human hunting. Oh, humans. So we as humans, not colossal, it's before our day, actually hunted them to extinction because these sheep farmers of Tasmania,
were stealing and killing each other's sheep and so they then you know blamed it on the thylacine and so what happened is the australian government actually put a bounty on the thylacine and they went and hunted them to extinction because they were getting paid by the federal government to kill them because they thought it was killing off the the sheep but there's no day if you go talk to actual like thylacine researchers people spend their whole life on it like dr andrew pasco on our team
Like there's no data that ever shows that thylacine could have even killed it. It wasn't the size of prey that they would predate on anyway. Makes you wonder how many keystone species were wiped out from humans. Yeah. So there's interesting studies that show the rise. It's 100% inverse related.
It's super interesting is that the rise of early man and the rise of early man on a new landmass and the decline of megafauna is directly inversely related. Wow. Yeah. Like in like on every continent that you study, it's like, oh, wait, when did this species go extinct? When was when did early man get get there?
Because early man, you know, went out and said, oh, we have to go out and, you know, same thing, energy expenditure. It's like if we go take down big, slow moving targets. Right. Well, or targets that we're scared of like wolves. Well, then, you know, that either gives us some degree of safety or. or provides meat and furs and tusks and anything else that we can go utilize.
And so we as humans have been pretty bad at eradicating keystone species for quite some time. So are those the ones you want to focus on bringing back keystone species? Yeah, we want to focus on keystone species. We do want to focus on species that mankind had a role in their extinction. Right.
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Chapter 8: What innovative solutions are being developed for elephant herpes?
You need to go through the right chain of custody. You got to make sure that you have government support on both sides. And if you can get that government support from the Peruvian government, because there's been some controversy around this where they don't, where like not everyone that's taking samples out of Peru had that permission. Yeah.
So as long as we have permission from the government, people want to do it. Sure, I'll go run it on our. You know, we have the top ancient DNA because, you know, one situation is it was it's something crazy. Another situation is it's fake. Another situation is it's some weird mutation around a population of humans. But no matter what, that's still interesting. And it's minimal work for us to do.
Yeah. I'm a big believer in just looking at all that. Like we get all kinds of crazy stuff. We, um, yeah. Uh, and I would say, I shouldn't say it crazy, but I mean, I'd probably say weekly we get like Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti emails. It's like, I've got this, uh, sample. Can you sample it?
You know, and, and, you know, we can't sample all of it, but if something like Jesse calls, something like Jesse calls us credible. Yeah. Yeah. It's a credible source of like, we neither know them or it's had some level of scientific rigor. We do it. So, right. That's probably like a fraction of a fraction of 1% of what we do.
But that kind of goes back to just like we're pretty open-minded at Colossal. And we take a different approach to all the sciences. Respect. Respect, honestly. Have there been any animals that are like nearly impossible to recreate for you so far? So I'll answer that in two ways. One is we get the dinosaur question. Every single time. Not like occasionally. We get the dinosaur.
We either get the like, have you, did you see Jurassic Park? And we get it in this like weird condescending way like that it was real. Like it happened in like the 90s. Like, you know what happened. They don't say like what happened in Jurassic Park. Like, you don't have an at Jurassic Park. We're like, okay. Like, yes, I'm very, very familiar with that happened in the movie.
But so we get that question a lot. And then that leads to, well, can you bring back dinosaurs? Half the people want to bring back dinosaurs. Half the people say they just quote Jurassic Park, right? And so I actually made a shirt that said preoccupied because we always get the you were preoccupied thinking of whether you should or could. You never thought to think whether you should.
So I actually made a preoccupied shirt. and I got a lot of flack for wearing it on stage. And then I wore an N shirt on stage once, and people did not think that was funny. I thought it was funny, because we just get asked the question all the time. But ultimately, we get asked the dinosaur question, but there is no dino DNA, right?
I don't like to say impossible, neither does George Church, but I don't think it's likely that there is dino DNA, because the Earth went through various heating periods since the extinction of the dinosaurs, Um, and also DNA just like right now, the oldest DNA we're working with is about 1.5 million years old. It's not 65 million years. That's a big jump. Yeah.
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