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European colonists drove South Africa\u2019s bluebuck antelope to extinction by the end of the 18th century (although the buck\u2019s larger and more hardy competitor, the roan antelope, had been chipping away at its turf for millennia). Historical accounts marvel at the long-lost antelope\u2019s regal bluish-silver coat and its long curved horns.<\/p>\n
Now\u2014for the first time since the advent of the motion picture camera\u2014the chance to see a living, glimmering bluebuck alive and kicking has miraculously improved, to judge from an announcement by the self-described \u201cde-extinction company,\u201d Colossal Biosciences. The Dallas-based biotech firm said Thursday that its new bluebuck de-extinction project would add the antelope to its roster of vanished species slated to reappear, alongside the woolly mammoth, the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dire wolf.<\/p>\n
But the project\u2019s genetic innovations, according to the company, would also translate well to badly needed conservation projects for the world\u2019s roughly 93 other antelope species, dozens of which are currently endangered.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfrican antelopes have long been neglected in global conservation,\u201d Colossal\u2019s chief science officer Beth Shapiro said in a statement. \u201cWhile other megafauna benefit from advanced reproductive technologies and extensive genomic research, antelopes\u2014despite being among the most diverse and rapidly declining large mammals on Earth\u2014have been left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colossal said that its project to bring back a version of the bluebuck has been quietly underway since 2024, with several major technological advancements already achieved.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s scientists have reportedly reconstructed a 40-fold genome of the historic bluebuck (Hippotragus leucophaeus<\/em>), a robust marker of so-called \u201cfold coverage\u201d promising breadth and redundancy for the firm\u2019s genomic sequencing data on this extinct species. Colossal also said it managed to produce induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from roan antelope, meaning that the creature that once market-corrected the bluebuck in Africa\u2019s grassy southwestern ecosystem has now been enlisted to help bring it back from extinction.<\/p>\n According to Colossal, its scientists are now in the genome editing phase, attempting a mix of approaches to one day engineer bluebuck variants into roan antelope iPSCs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bluebuck sits within the bovid family, allowing us to extend our mammalian work into a new group of animals with different reproductive biology, size, and gestation timelines,\u201d Colossal Biosciences CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery reproductive technology, genome editing protocol, and conservation tool we develop through this effort is designed to scale\u2014directly benefiting the 29 antelope species currently at risk,\u201d Lamm continued. \u201cBy focusing on the bluebuck, we\u2019re not only working to restore a lost species, but also building solutions that can help protect entire ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n One critical innovation that the company hopes will translate to other conservation projects is Colossal\u2019s ovum pickup (OPU) techniques for antelope species, which promise to harvest oocytes, or immature egg cells, from live antelopes in a purportedly minimally invasive and scalable way.<\/p>\n Colossal reported that its team engineered new ultrasonographic visualization tools and hormone stimulation methods that allowed them to accomplish OPUs successfully for two antelope species, the roan antelope and scimitar-horned oryx. The team has posted the details on this technique, as applied to bovids, like bison and antelopes, and equids, like horses, in a preprint journal article at bioRxiv now undergoing peer review.<\/p>\n \u201cThe specialized ovum pickup protocols we\u2019ve developed for antelopes are game-changers for conservation breeding,\u201d Colossal\u2019s chief animal officer Matt James said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cPreviously, collecting viable oocytes from wild bovid species was nearly impossible and lacked scalability, limiting abilities to develop conservation technologies to support dwindling antelope populations,\u201d according to James. \u201cThese new techniques dramatically expand our conservation toolkit and are exactly the kind of technological spillover we aim for in our de-extinction work.\u201d<\/p>\n The company said it was \u201crapidly scaling\u201d this technology to cover additional, still living, but critically endangered antelope species in an effort to build out the infrastructure needed to aid these species in the future.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nBuck rewilding<\/h2>\n