Beth Shapiro

Shapiro argues that rejecting new conservation technologies as too risky is itself a choice that accepts reduced biodiversity.

“Doing nothing is not not deciding. Doing nothing is saying we accept the fact that we are going to have a future that is less biodiverse than the present”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:23:57

Shapiro argues that de-extinction and conservation use the same tools and that excitement about extinct species drives investment in protecting living ones.

“when we excite people with the idea of mammoths and dodos and thylacines, we get more engagement and enthusiasm and investment in developing the technology”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:13:44

Shapiro explains that dinosaurs cannot be revived because the oldest recovered DNA, from a mammoth, is around one to two million years old, while dinosaurs died out over 66 million years ago.

“We can't bring a dinosaur back to life because we don't have dinosaur DNA. The oldest DNA that we have ever recovered from a bone is from a mammoth bone”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 32:39

Shapiro states Colossal does not plan to release dire wolves into the wild because they would compete with already struggling gray wolves.

“if we released dire wolves, they would compete with gray wolves. And gray wolves are already having enough trouble trying to find a way to survive”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:06:56

Shapiro says Colossal avoided the actual dire wolf coat-color variants because related edits in gray wolves and dogs can cause albinism, blindness or deafness, using known-safe variants instead.

“We wouldn't make the trait that way. It just wasn't passing the bar of animal welfare safety”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 59:18

Shapiro says Colossal's dire wolves were made by engineering 20 fossil-informed edits into a gray wolf genome, and she is content to call the result a dire wolf if it fills the niche.

“If it looks like a dire wolf and it's able to fill the niche of a dire wolf, I'm happy to call it a dire wolf”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 57:03

Shapiro says Colossal announced cloned red wolves alongside the dire wolves to add genetic diversity to the endangered red wolf population.

“we've cloned these wolves as a means to introduce new red wolf genetic diversity into the existing red wolf population”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 2:01:00

Shapiro says Colossal's moa project is led by the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, with Māori people deciding how many moa to make and where to release them.

“Our MOA project is led by the Ngāi Tahu Research Center in South Island of New Zealand”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:27:01

Shapiro says a Neanderthal-derived variant at roughly 50% frequency in Asian populations was associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes.

“one of the first alleles that was discovered to be associated with negative risk or bad outcomes of COVID was a gene that came from Neanderthals”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 26:21

Shapiro says that pooling Neanderthal DNA fragments across living humans would reconstruct over 90% of the Neanderthal genome, implying most of it was not maladaptive.

“We would put together more than 90%, possibly more than 95% of the Neanderthal genome just from people who are alive today”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 23:41

Shapiro says Colossal is developing artificial wombs, starting with mice, because producing many mammoths via elephant pregnancies is impractical, and the technology could help humans.

“We need a way to be able to birth multiple mammoths simultaneously without using elephants”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:55:31

Shapiro says domestic ferrets are not susceptible to plague, so identifying the genetic basis could allow editing black-footed ferrets to be plague resistant.

“Domestic ferrets are not susceptible to plague. And that susceptibility must have some genetic underpinning”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:46:17

Shapiro says ancient DNA shows height-associated genes entered Europe with Yamnaya steppe migrants about 4,700 years ago, evidence of genetic selection in humans.

“a lot of these genes were first introduced into Europe with the steppe people at about 4,700 years ago at the Yamnaya”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:33:59

Shapiro argues gene drives are a powerful tool that, with safety measures, should be considered, noting they can be limited to a fixed number of generations.

“I actually think that gene drives are an incredibly powerful way that we have at our fingertips where with the appropriate safety measures and care in place”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:21:41

Shapiro reports that Colossal Australia partners engineered a single-letter change into quoll cells that could make northern quolls resistant to cane toad toxin.

“that single letter change to that quoll's genome could allow that quoll not only to avoid becoming extinct, but to eat cane toads”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 1:15:08

Shapiro says the goal is not to replicate an individual mammoth but to engineer an elephant with the traits shared by mammoths that allow it to live in mammoth habitats.

“that is where I'm going to focus my energy in bringing back a mammoth, which will be an elephant that is capable of living in the habitats that a mammoth lived in”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 52:19

Shapiro reports that brown bears in North America carry polar bear ancestry from interbreeding about 20,000 years ago, but polar bears show no brown bear ancestry, likely because hybrids cannot hunt seals.

“if you have brown bear ancestry, you don't have perfectly white fur and you cannot successfully hunt seals”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 18:05

Shapiro argues that species is a human construct for communication, not something biology itself recognizes.

“biology doesn't care what species you are. Species is a human concept”

Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 3:48