One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants

    It's generally assumed in the field of genetics that organisms produce offspring of the same species. This article explored how Messor ibericus, a species of ant, are able to give birth to offspring of two different species: Messor Ibericus and Messor Structor. For most ants, queens handle most if not all of the offspring, which they fertilize with sperm obtained during their nuptial flights from male ants, called alates, of the same species. The sperm is stored in a unique organ called the spermatheca, that helps store the sperm and keep it fertile for upwards of 30 years in some species, requiring the queen to only be fertilized once. In this case, it was discovered that Messor Ibericus cannot reproduce without the sperm of Messor Structor males. Thus, for the species to survive, the Ibericus queens have adapted a unique type of sexual hybridization through sperm parasitism, to create both male Ibericus and male Structor to boost reproductive odds of the species as a whole during nuptial flights. The article theorizes that the adaptation was forced, as the species diverged over 5 million years ago, yet were pushed to two distinct locations. One population was left without Structor, and was forced to hybridize. 

Sources:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w

https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Messor_ibericus

Cloning Your Pet?

    

    Numerous celebrities have cloned their deceased pets with biotechnology companies. For $50,000, these companies will insert the DNA of the desired animal into donor egg cells and create a genetically identical pet. As we know, a genome only accounts for a fraction of what makes an individual, along with the environment and other outside factors. While these companies promise a genetic twin, the pet will not be a true clone with potential differences in temperament and personality. By employing genetic engineering, the biotech company Collasal Biosciences, which has termed itself a ‘de-extinction’ company, has concentrated its efforts on diversifying the gene pool of endangered species in the hopes of bringing species out of extinction. 

Cloning pets maintains a degree of controversy including ethical and social concerns. There are a variety of businesses that capitalize off of the technique, including Viagen, which has claimed to clone more animals than any other company. However, concentrating the technology into preserving endangered species provides a novel approach to conserving a range of ecosystems. While cloning is trivial, different applications provide the opportunity for growth, preservation, and maintenance of our environment. The article raises relevant questions about the implications of cloning genes in society and what it means for the future of genetic engineering. 

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/07/1127692/cloning-celebrity-pets-tom-brady-dog-conservation/

Additional Link:

https://viagenpets.com/dog-cloning/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23100856057

Cloning Breakthroughs Reveal the Limits of DNA

 An article from 2022 reveals that over 1000 dogs have been successfully cloned. The article shows how scientists have been cloning dogs, across multiple breeds, with relatively high success when compared to other animals. This is great news for the advancements in the field of genetics, due to dogs having a number of genetic similarities when compared to humans. With this being said, studies reveal that despite being genetically identical, the dogs would sometimes look or act differently to their original counterpart. These differences are likely caused by epigenetic factors (changes in how genes are expressed, not the genes themselves) and issues with the cloning process, such as how cells are reprogrammed. With this in mind one can imagine how an individual paying over $50,000 to clone their beloved family pet may be disappointed when it looks and acts nothing like the original. Oscar winning singer and actress Barbra Streisand was one of these individuals, stating, “They have different personalities... I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness.”

All in all, it is clear that cloning is more complex than just copying DNA. While it can produce animals that are genetically identical, environmental and cellular factors play a big role in how those animals actually turn out. As the process of cloning becomes more refined, and more research gets done, it is not outside the realm of possibility that there will be clones every where within the near future.

Is the Dire Wolf Back from Extinction?

Is the Dire Wolf Back from Extinction?

Kylee French

BIOL-2110-001 - GENETICS Professor Guy F. Barbato October 19, 2025 The recent achievement by Colossal Biosciences, creating animals that carry key genes of the extinct dire wolf, is both fascinating and a little alien to me. The article "Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close", highlights how scientists are using advances in genetics to analyze ancient DNA, identify important mutations, and edit the genomes of living gray wolves to recreate traits of a long-extinct species. It’s amazing to think that humans can now use science to “bring back” characteristics of animals that disappeared thousands of years ago. This project reminds me of efforts to clone pets, showing that humans have long been trying to bring back life. At the same time, the article also raises concerns. Sometimes genetic experiments don’t always succeed, and animals can suffer negative effects, such as blindness or other health problems, when the editing goes wrong. Overall, while this work is incredibly cool, it also comes with responsibilities that cannot be ignored.

To elaborate more from the article, scientists set out to bring back traits of the extinct dire wolf using genetics. They first retrieved DNA from ancient dire wolf fossils and identified the key mutations that made dire wolves different from gray wolves. Using cells from living gray wolves, they edited 20 genes to include these dire-wolf traits and created embryos, which were implanted into surrogate dog mothers (Zimmer, 2025). This article also mentions that if it was possible they could maybe bring back other extinct animals too: "Suppose, for instance, that they recovered an intact cell from the frozen carcass of a woolly mammoth. Perhaps the cell could be thawed and used to create a mammoth clone" (Zimmer, 2025). For one, while it is relatively easy to make a single edit to the DNA of an animal, the scientists hoped to make dozens of edits. Then there was the matter of producing animals from the edited DNA. This is where many challenges arrived for them, but instead scientists pivoted to focus on the dire wolves. While the animals born are not exact copies of dire wolves, they carry the most important genetic features, marking a major step toward “de-extinction” and demonstrating the potential of modern genetic engineering.

    On a related note, this process reminds me of owners wanting to clone their pets. An article titled “Insights from One Thousand Cloned Dogs” explains how animal cloning has been pursued for two decades, with dogs being the most commonly cloned mammals. The article notes, “These observations differ between donors and their clones, and between clones from the same donor, indicating a non-genetic effect. These differences cannot be fully explained by current understandings but point to epigenetic and cellular reprogramming effects of somatic cell nuclear transfer” (Olsson, 2022). This shows that genetic cloning might not always produce the results we expect and can come with complications. For example, in the dire-wolf project, “The scientists introduced dire-wolf mutations to 15 genes. But they did not introduce the remaining five, because previous studies had shown that those five mutations cause deafness and blindness in gray wolves” (Zimmer, 2025). Overall, these examples show that while genetic engineering and cloning hold incredible potential, they also come with unpredictable outcomes and ethical considerations that scientists must carefully navigate.

References

Olsson, P.O., Jeong, Y.W., Jeong, Y. et al. Insights from one thousand cloned dogs. Sci Rep 12, 11209 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-15097-7

Zimmer, C. (2025, April 7). Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close. New York Times. Retrieved October 19, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html