← Digital Social Hour
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- [00:04]
WhatsApp Narrator
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- [00:27]
Indeed Narrator
Learn more@WhatsApp.com this episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit. And@ Indeed.com podcast, terms and conditions apply.
- [00:59]
Ben Lamb
There is no dino DNA because the earth went through various heating period 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 old.
- [01:10]
Interviewer
That's a big job.
- [01:11]
Ben Lamb
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, foreign.
- [01:25]
Interviewer
Guys, we got Ben Lamb. Here we are at AI4 conference. He's speaking tomorrow. I bet you're revealing something exciting.
- [01:31]
Ben Lamb
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.
- [01:39]
Interviewer
Yeah. How are you using AI at Colossal? Mainly, yeah.
- [01:41]
Ben Lamb
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, from a bird beak morphology perspective from all these birds. And 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 there's actually unique to them. And so, 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 of it's like crispr or think if it's like gene editing, it's kind of like a catch all.
- [02:41]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [02:41]
Ben Lamb
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, you know, which types of edits make the highest efficiency for that type of effect without causing kind of this like disruption downstream in the genome. And all that's using AI. So I'll tell you, these projects would take, you know, decades if we didn't have AI and I think some of them probably wouldn't even be able to be done.
- [03:27]
Interviewer
That's incredible.
- [03:28]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, it's, it's truly remarkable. And, and what's interesting is like now like with Quantum just around the corner, it's going to be really, really interesting probably what the next like five years holds for us. And in terms of like how we can engineer more and more species and even fill in gaps of species that we don't have full DNA of. Really?
- [03:45]
Interviewer
Wow. So how would Quantum help with that process I guess?
- [03:48]
Ben Lamb
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.
- [04:05]
Liberty Mutual Narrator
And Doug, here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [04:21]
Ben Lamb
Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [04:24]
Liberty Mutual Narrator
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [04:25]
Ben Lamb
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.
- [04:28]
Liberty Mutual Narrator
Liberty, Liberty, Liberty Savings vary.
- [04:31]
Ben Lamb
Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
- [04:34]
Jack Daniels Narrator
This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40 alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee Much data.
- [04:59]
Ben Lamb
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 itself. Yeah. So I mean, that we're not there yet because the tech's not there yet. But I think that, you know, in the next five to ten years we'll, that's where we'll be is like there was some really interesting. There's a story that came out a couple 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 it's a weird, I don't, 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 by the, and stamped by the FDA for safety and efficacy in humans. Right. They're just being used to treat another disease. And, and so they use all this company use 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. And so think about that. You know, we are, we have so much data already that if we can start looking at, you know, 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 and that we probably have. You know, it's, it's, it reminds me of that story where, I don't know if you read this like five years ago where NASA like had already found like other exoplanets and it was just in the data, but they never had the compute power to go back and look through it.
- [06:44]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [06:44]
Ben Lamb
And I think that exists probably for human healthcare as well.
- [06:47]
Interviewer
So they already found other exoplanets. I didn't even know that.
- [06:49]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [06:51]
Interviewer
That is nuts.
- [06:51]
Ben Lamb
Yeah.
- [06:52]
Interviewer
I'd imagine the simulation is going to be important as you start reintroducing these species back into the wild. Right.
- [06:57]
Ben Lamb
And we're trying to. And that's another big. That's a great question. Most people don't think of that as a data problem. But like all the work that we do for Colossal that has an application to conservation, we open source for the world. Right. We try to work with our partners. We have about 60 different conservation partners all around the world. But what's really interesting about that is that some of those projects that while they're helping to save existing species, like using AI for understanding socialization and migratory patterns in elephants, well, that's helping elephants today from a conservation perspective. But also we're taking that same data and applying it to how do we then build synthetic herds for woolly mammoths? Right. And so that's what's pretty cool is like the data that we learned from the data that we garner today from using these, these tools for Asian elephants and African elephants can then apply, build those kind of this base case model of around. How do we rewild mammoths long term?
- [07:53]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. You predicted mammoths by 2030. Is that still the timeline?
- [07:56]
Ben Lamb
So we said 2028. By end of 2028 it's 22 month gestation. That means that we have to be at our embryos by the end of 2026 and, and we're on track for that, which is amazing. Right. The, the, the, the thing that I think Colossal has done a really good job of is, is looking at, in running all of these experiments like they're almost like a software company. So trying to retrain scientists to work like in, in things like Smart cheats and JIRA is always fun and interesting. But we try to look at this like a software product. Right. And so how do we actually ship products so that when we set expectations to the world we can actually deliver? And, and hopefully in cases like the direwolf over deliver and deliver sooner than we expect. Well, what's interesting about that is like we have to parallel path all these different projects along the way.
- [08:42]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [08:43]
Ben Lamb
So for us on the path to the mammoth, like we didn't just wait till we got the, all the DNA. We didn't just wait till we got all the genome sequences. We started working in sequencing the elephant genome, started doing the comparative genomics. We try to parallel path everything. So we have not successfully yet put embryos that are not edited into that of a elephant. But we're working on all the technologies and it's a category of science called assisted reproductive technologies, which is also really helpful for conservation. So we're working on all those tools and technologies to. So that when we have that embryo, we'll be ready to put it in.
- [09:15]
Interviewer
Got it. So you would put it into an elephant.
- [09:17]
Ben Lamb
Asian elephant.
- [09:18]
Interviewer
Yeah, Asian elephant. And that would turn into a mammoth.
- [09:20]
Ben Lamb
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 folate utero that's only 23 days gestation versus 22 months. And when our first elephants will be born, they'll be £300. So different challenges, but fundamental biology has to be solved, you know, for us to even scale from mouse to pig to then eventually species that grow into elephants. Right. And then, and then we even have an artificial egg construct that we're working with, you know, so that we can grow eggs fully extreme.
- [10:08]
Interviewer
Without the two animals mating?
- [10:09]
Ben Lamb
No, without. With the two animals mating and then in having the eggs so that we get kind of those core PGCs that are edited, but then extracting them and putting them in a. In a. So. So it's kind of a Gen 2. The problem with some of the avian work is you kind of have two generations because you have to create these, 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. And do everything else in a synthetic egg.
- [10:38]
Interviewer
Holy crap.
- [10:39]
Ben Lamb
So it won't get rid of the entire process, but it's huge. It'll get rid of half the process for gestation. And it's also super helpful for scale. Right. So imagine a world where, you know, we don't have to breed, you know, you know, thousands of Gen1 and Gen2 dodos. We can do all of that in ex utero eggs.
- [10:56]
Interviewer
Wow. Who would have thought 10 years ago that an artificial Womb would be possible. This kick.
- [11:00]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. And what's crazy is, I mean, we're not there yet. We don't have one. But I do think that we're on path to have one in the next few years.
- [11:06]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [11:06]
Ben Lamb
Now it's not we're gonna be growing mammoths in the next few years in it, but you know, I think, you know, in the next five to 10, it's, it's highly likely that we could.
- [11:12]
Interviewer
Nice. What did mammoth see back in the day?
- [11:14]
Ben Lamb
Oh, just like they were foragers, right. So they took they 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.
- [11:27]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [11:28]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. So they were mostly, you know.
- [11:29]
Interviewer
So they didn't eat meat?
- [11:30]
Ben Lamb
No, they were, they did not eat meat. Wow. Yeah.
- [11:32]
Interviewer
And that was the main, was that the main reason you started the company was to bring them back.
- [11:36]
Ben Lamb
So, so my, so I'm the reason I started the company was, you know, I, I, 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. All these tools can help elephants today and we can inspire the next generation. And so given that I've got a little bit of add in me and you know, I've got that kind of entrepreneurial spirit, I felt like this was a project that, you know, could create a lot of value, create a lot of impact, and then also hopefully inspire that next generation. Right. So I was kind of getting in the phase where I was going to start having kids. And so I just kind of thought it was like the perfect project. And then if we're successful, you know, science and the world's never the same after that. Right. And so, you know, I think it's one of those things that I think post Covid, a lot of us, you know, was like, do we just want to sit around, watch Netflix or do we want to do something more awesome? Right. And so you see like SpaceX, you see all these awesome companies are inspiring people to go be engineers. What if we could do that for biology? What if we get people really excited to say, I want to go be a genetic engineering major, 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. So. So that was the Only gap in my.
- [12:53]
Interviewer
That's a smart way to get kids interested, because every kid loves animals, right?
- [12:56]
Ben Lamb
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. And. And from parents and their kids and even from classrooms telling us how excited they are about what we're working on.
- [13:09]
Interviewer
Yeah. How fulfilling was it to recreate that direwolf puzzle?
- [13:11]
Ben Lamb
Oh, it was awesome. You know, the hard. Some of the hard thing about us is, like, we try to balance, like, full transparency, but also at the same 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, it was funny. 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 direwolves if that's the case of, like. Of what we saw with the. With the mouse. And so the hard thing is, like, you know, when we announced the wolves to the world, you know, they were, you know, four and five months old, and so it was hard to, like, keep that project under wraps a secret because we were so excited about telling everyone about what we were working on. So. But. But when we finally got it, got to rip the band aid off and show the world, it was crazy. Like, 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. That launch was insane. I bet. Yeah.
- [14:09]
Interviewer
There's probably a lot of fires behind the scenes, I'd imagine.
- [14:11]
Ben Lamb
Oh, yeah. We had a. We had the New Yorker break the embargo. So we. We had. 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. And then, like, our. Our scientific paper wasn't live. So then people were arguing that direwolves weren't close, their closest living relatives wasn't wolves. It was jackals. It's like, no, no, that paper's 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. It was a. It was a crazy. It was a crazy five days.
- [14:55]
Interviewer
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.
- [14:58]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, it's like, yeah. I mean, I would have, you know, we. 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. 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, everyone wants to look at their other version of. Of the story. Everyone, you know, has the other side.
- [15:28]
Interviewer
Because you can't.
- [15:28]
Ben Lamb
You can't do anything in this world where it's like, just good, right? And so we thought we, 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.
- [15:53]
Interviewer
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?
- [16:02]
Ben Lamb
Like, yeah, so there's different approvals for different things. Right. And so we have what's called a CITES in a coast permit. So we worked really closely with Fish and Wildlife, we work with Department of Interior, and that allows us to import samples and like, protect them.
- [16:15]
Interviewer
In what?
- [16:15]
Ben Lamb
In biobanks. We're working on a new model around biobanking that's like tissue preservation because, you know, it's forecasted that we can lose up to 50% of all biodiversity in the next 25 years. So, you know, while, you know, 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, like, living cells and reconstruct it and rebuild as an extinct species for today. Right. And so, so we work with them on that, then separately. And this also creates all kind of, like, weird. We get weird articles about this, but in Q Tel, which is part of the federal government, and. 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. They're creating battle mammoths. It's like, we're not creating battle mammoth. Let us just make mammoths first. Right. And so. And so. 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, you know, not. No one's ever done this. No one's ever kind of worked through. Through 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, you know, everyone feels comfortable with what we do.
- [17:38]
Interviewer
Yeah. So you said we're projected to lose 50% of biodiversity. That would affect the average person, I'd imagine.
- [17:43]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. It affects all of us. Right. And so what people don't sometimes realize is, and I didn't, before I end 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. And so we see that with large herbivores like mammoth and bison and others, we see that with certain aquatic animals, like blue whales, we see that, you know, even in predators, like. Like wolves. Right. And so there's an awesome study about Yellowstone where when they removed the wolves from Yellowstone and culled them 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, they ate, 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 working 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. Yeah. So it's crazy. They've actually mapped that the. That the reintroduction of wolves has actually re. Not only like increased biodiversity into Yellowstone, but it's also reshaped rivers in Yellowstone. Yeah, it's crazy because when, when I think about it, when a river, when a beaver dams at the river, it actually starts to expand, it actually starts to erode. The bottom actually gets deeper, there's actually cooler water, deeper. And so there's actually different types of fish populations, 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 in nature is pretty awesome at fixing itself. Right. And so it's like, if we can just figure out how we work with technology in nature, then I think, you know, humanity will be fine.
- [19:35]
Interviewer
Yeah, I can't believe that because you're introducing the apex predator of the area and it's actually helping the.
- [19:41]
Ben Lamb
So we had the. There's been some really interesting studies on the Tasman Tasmanian tiger, another project they were working on, where there's an awful disease that's a transmissible cancer, which is also just terrifying. Like the words transmissible and cancer are the same for the cancer. 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 acute animals. Most people think of Tasmanian devils, they think of like Looney Tunes, what it looks like. But they're actually pretty cool animals. But they're pretty aggressive when they're feeding. And. And what's interesting though is that when they scratch and bite each other, they'll transmit this, this, this cancer, this facial tumor disease. It eats away at the face. It's awful. Don't Google it. It's terrifying. You have 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, 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 to make a kill, it's about energy expenditure, right?
- [20:47]
Interviewer
So.
- [20:47]
Ben Lamb
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're going 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.
- [21:19]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [21:20]
Ben Lamb
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.
- [21:32]
Interviewer
How did they get wiped out?
- [21:34]
Ben Lamb
Hunting Human. Hunting.
- [21:35]
Interviewer
Oh, humans.
- [21:36]
Ben Lamb
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 sheep. But there's no day if you go talk to actual like thylacine researchers, people that spend their whole life on it, like Dr. Andrew Pasco on our team, like, there's no data that ever shows a thylacine could have even killed it. It wasn't the size of prey that they would predate on anyway.
- [22:17]
Interviewer
Makes you wonder how many keystone species were wiped out from humans. Yeah.
- [22:21]
Ben Lamb
So there's interesting studies that show the rise. It's 100% inverse related. Super interesting is that the rise of early man is. And then rise of early man on a new landmass and the decline of megafauna is directly inversely related.
- [22:36]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [22:36]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, like in, 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? What? Or targets that we're scared of, like wolves. Well then, you know, that either gives us some degree of safety or degree, or it provides meat and furs and tusk and anything else that we can go utilize. And so, so, you know, we as humans have been pretty bad at eradicating keystone species for quite some time.
- [23:14]
Interviewer
So are those the ones you want to focus on, bringing back keystone species?
- [23:17]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, we want to focus on keystone species. We do want to focus on species that mankind had a role in their extinction.
- [23:23]
Interviewer
We.
- [23:23]
Ben Lamb
It's actually a pretty. We don't. Like, some people will ask us, like, what were your top species and why? And it's really kind of a matrix. It's like, is there, is there an ability to do it, number one, is there a purpose in doing it? Right? So maybe it's ecosystem restoration. Maybe it's what science that we can then go apply to its most critically endangered species partner. You know, what are the cultural impacts? Right? Like indigenous. Like, is there an indigenous component to this that people are excited about? Right. Like, we just announced with the Ngi Tahu Research center, which is part of the Maori people in, in New Zealand about the Moa. Right. And so that is part of that species is part of the. What's called the Tonga or their sacred species. And so we can't, we would never even think to go work on that species without getting their support and blessing because, you know, it's really. That was their land, their people over time eradicated that species. So is this something they even want to do? And so, so we think about that. But then we also, like, with the direwolves, we also think about like the, like, while we had indigenous support here in the US because the, the direwolves was predominantly a US based species, we also think about, like, what are the applications to kids, right? And so it's like most people thought dire wolves were mythical creatures because they saw Game of Thrones or played, you know, Dungeons and Dragons or, you know, Magic the Gathering, right? But in the reality, they're also like, wow. And they're in a bunch of other things, right? But like, ultimately, you know, when you, when you, if you can bridge science and pop culture, then I think that's a good thing, right? It's like if we can get people interested in this. And so one of my buddies, Jesse Michaels, I don't know if you know.
- [24:55]
Interviewer
I heard of him.
- [24:56]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, so, so he's, he's an awesome guy, super smart entrepreneur, tech guy. He's got a YouTube and a podcast now and he's working on these tridactyles. Have you gone Peruvian mummel mummies?
- [25:08]
Interviewer
No.
- [25:08]
Ben Lamb
Have you gone down this rabbit hole? Interesting though, you got to go down this rabbit.
- [25:11]
Interviewer
Peruvian mummies. So mummies actually existed back then? Yeah.
- [25:14]
Ben Lamb
So the, There are these Mummified bodies, right, That I think that it's. I think it's like tridactyls.org or something you can find. It's very easy to find. And so, like, Jesse called me, right, and said, hey, you know, have you seen this tridactyl thing? And it's basically, there are these humanoid figures that have been found in Peru, and there's. There's a little bit of controversy and craziness around it, but they're these humanoid figures that have, like, you know, three fingers versus in three toe versus, like, having what we have. They're shorter. I mean, they look straight out of something, out of, like, close encounters. Like, I mean, that's exactly what they look like, right? And so it's crazy. So there's all kinds of, like, conspiracies around it and whatnot, which is interesting. But, you know, Jesse called me. He's like, man, I've done a lot of research on this. I spent a lot of time and a lot of money. We've done MRI studies. We've done all this stuff. It's like, I. And this is Jesse speaking. He's like, I believe they're real. And I was like, well, yeah, like, Jesse's a smart dude, right? And, like, I know him pretty well. And so I was like. I was like, well, look, you know, it's ancient DNA, because they're. They. They think they're about 10,000 years old if they're real, right? I don't know if they're real. I can't claim that because I've seen the data. And I said, well, look, if you can get the right permits to export them to us, we'll totally, like, sequence them, right? And so this goes back to that pop culture thing. It's like, some people would be like, oh, no, that. That's controversial, or that sounds like aliens and weird like, that. Like, you're a science company. Why would you have it? But I just believe that we don't know everything, right? And we learn new stuff every single day. And so I told Jesse, I was like, look, we have an ancient DNA lab. We arguably have the number one computational biology lab in the entire world. And so if you can get us the samples and bring them in the right way, because that's another issue with samples, right? You need to go through the right chain of custody. 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 have that, that, that permission. So as long as we have permission from the government, people want us 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 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. So I'm a big believer in just looking at all that. Like we get all kinds of crazy stuff, we and I, which I shouldn't say crazy but I mean I probably say weekly we get like Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti emails. It's like I've got this sample, can you sample it? You know and you know we can't sample all of it but if something like Jesse call it, something like Jesse calls it credible. Yeah, yeah, it's a credible source of like we neither know them or, or it's had some level of scientific rigor. We do it. So 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. We try to. And we take a different approach to all the sciences.
- [28:04]
Interviewer
Respect, respect. Honestly, have there been any animals that are like nearly impossible to recreate for you so far?
- [28:10]
Ben Lamb
So, so to that in two ways. One is we get the dinosaur question every single time. No, not, 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 happen at Jurassic Park. Like okay, that like, yes, I, I'm very, very familiar with that happened in the movie. But so we get that question and then, and then that leads to well, can you bring back dinosaurs? Half the people want to bring back dinosaurs. Half the people say they, they just quote Jurassic park. Right?
- [28:50]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [28:50]
Ben Lamb
And so I actually made a shirt that said preoccupied because we always get the, the you were preoccupied thinking of whether you should. You did 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 I wore an insured 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. 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.
- [29:38]
Interviewer
That's a big jump.
- [29:39]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. And like, amber's a very porous material. It develops in very hot places, wet places. That's not good for DNA storage.
- [29:46]
Interviewer
So.
- [29:47]
Ben Lamb
So there is no amber DNA. So dinosaurs one. There's other species that we cannot create today because there's nothing to gestate them. And this is where artificial wombs come in. And that's. That's an area I'm excited about.
- [29:58]
Interviewer
Got it. Were there specific species?
- [30:00]
Ben Lamb
I'll get all two. One is a giant. Have you seen the giant ground sloth? No. You got to go down this rabbit hole of like, just Google interesting extinct species, right? And here I'll give you kind of four that are cool. There's a giant ground sloth that was a, like, you know, like a sloth that you see that are like slow moving. Imagine one of those that is like, that can make caves because it's so big and it's got claws that can literally burrow caves. We could walk in and it would literally eat trees because it was as big as a tree. There's this thing called the Glyptodon, which is if you take like an armadillo and make it the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. That was awesome. And we have DNA for it, which is crazy. One of my favorites is this stellar sea cow. It's actually really sad. It was a species that the stellar sea cow was about. Think of like a manatee that or dugong that's the size bigger than a whale. You know, slow moving, super nice. You know, and it's one of those sad stories that it was like eradicated within like 30 or 60 years of ever being discovered. That's fast because guess what? It's like big, slow moving target, lots of blubber and fat feeds, you know, colonies of people. So that's so that's cool. Those are. Those are a couple. Oh, there's also a giant beaver in America.
- [31:18]
Interviewer
Beaver.
- [31:19]
Ben Lamb
There's a giant beaver, which I think may be the silliest species unless you turn it into some weird sci fi horror movie. But yeah.
- [31:26]
Interviewer
So they were making some big damns.
- [31:28]
Ben Lamb
Exactly.
- [31:29]
Interviewer
Why were those species so much larger back in the day?
- [31:31]
Ben Lamb
You know, there's lots of theories on that. Right. So, you know, many people think that there was less environmental pressures. Many people think there's like less human pressures, access to different food sources. If you go back to even the dinosaur age, there's even people that think that it's based on the oxygen and nitrogen, the content. But the oxygen nitrogen content, that looks very, very different. You know, 12,000, 13,000, 50,000 years ago it did 65 million years ago. So I don't really subscribe to that. I think it was just like you see this in like environmental locations like islands and whatnot, where you get different pressures that create different species and subspecies.
- [32:12]
Interviewer
I saw you say on Rogan, you don't touch human and gene editing at all.
- [32:15]
Ben Lamb
We don't. Now a lot of the technologies do apply to, to humans. And so part of our monetization model is we spin those technologies out. Right. So if there's an application to conservation, we open source it for the world. If there's an application for human health care or industrial use cases, we'll spin those out.
- [32:32]
Interviewer
Got it.
- [32:32]
Ben Lamb
So we won't go use those technologies, we'll go put those into a new company where colossal investors and shareholders can benefit from it. Yeah. And then that company has needs different investors, needs different governance. I don't run this company, Sam.
- [32:45]
Interviewer
I will say it's tempting. You know, I plan on having kids and like I have the autism gene break, so it's like, why risk that for my kids? So it's a little tempting, you know.
- [32:53]
Ben Lamb
So, so I did. So I just had my first kid. Y. He's awesome. He's 14 months. It's super awesome. And I actually have a gene mutation that creates a truncated protein off my heart right off the Titan gene. Pretty big one. I think it's either the base gene or one of the biggest genes in, in the, in the body. And I didn't want to pass that on. You know, I'm healthy. It still takes some meds to control. I didn't want to pass it on. And so if you do typical embryo screening, that doesn't show up. Right. It doesn't show up in your. Your what I say standard. And so I found this company. Full disclosure, I'm an investor in the company, but I invested after I like, I didn't invest in. But I always want to be transparent about when I have money in something, I talk about it. And so, so I hired this company called Orchid Health and what they do is they do the next level of screening. So you do, you know, certain screening, you know, if you go through, we went through ivf, so if you go through that, you just. Certain screening and you can learn you certain things. But it doesn't screen for like specific variants like what I had. Right. So, so I didn't do. I wanted to pass, make sure I pass that didn't pass it on. So we went through this process where we extracted eggs, created embryos, and then we screened all the embryos. And it also does this poly. In addition to screening for specific variants, it also in specific gene mutations, it creates this like interesting kind of like polygenic kind of risk assessment that also says, hey, we know that some of these genes could lead to late stage Alzheimer's or could lead to these different other disease states. Right. And so, you know, while it's not an exact science because there's still environmental factors, you do know that there are some people that have a predisposition to diabetes, certain cancers, Alzheimer's and whatnot. And so we use this company called Orchid Health and it was awesome. I was in so happy with the results and having a healthy kid.
- [34:46]
Interviewer
I love it.
- [34:47]
Ben Lamb
I called them up. I was like, can I invest in you guys?
- [34:49]
Interviewer
See, I love that. I think it gets tricky once we start producing these super athletes or these super high people.
- [34:54]
Ben Lamb
I agree, I agree. It's hard, it's complex and the technology is moving faster than regulation. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Right. It just means that we need to be thoughtful about it and so colossal. Never wanted to be in that discussion. So we said, okay, maybe like our genome engineering tools could be applied to that. We're going to spin those out. And that's, that's another company's headache to go work through the regulatory aspects of that. So, so we, we try to be. That we also didn't want to create. There's always enough, there's enough kind of excitement for what we do and there's also enough conspiracy around what we do. So. So I didn't want people to be like, oh, on, in this lab they're working on mammoths. In this lab they're working on saber tooth tigers. On this lab they're working on dinosaurs. And in this lab where they're working on super soldiers, that, that would be the. Even though we're not working on any of those things besides mammoths, that would be that linear kind of formula. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:43]
Interviewer
A lot of conspiracies these days.
- [35:44]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. And so I want to be like, I want to. And, yeah, some of them turned out to be true. And so. So I wanted to be thoughtful of that in our process. But. But orchid, like, they're not genome engineering. They're just giving parents the data to make better decisions.
- [35:57]
Interviewer
Right. And I'm a fan of that.
- [35:59]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, I am, too. I am, too. Because it's. I mean, obviously, because I did it with my kids, and then I obviously did it also invested.
- [36:04]
Interviewer
Like, if you have a certain cancer predisposition, why would you risk that for your kid? Right. You know?
- [36:08]
Ben Lamb
Well, we'll think about it. It's like you. You put you. You want your kids to go to the best schools. You want your kids. You know, I think that generally speaking, most people want to provide a better life than what their. Even though their parents did great. I want to provide a better life. You always want to try to be improving the world, improving the kids, improving society. Right. You know, the way that we. You know, everyone always talks about, like, oh, the world's so weird right now. Like. Yeah. But 150 years ago is a lot weirder. Like, it was. It was like, people were, like, okay. Doing, like, really weird stuff to other humans. People had, like, many certain groups of people didn't have rights and. Sounds like it's a very different time. Right. Like, it's not perfect now, but it was pretty bad. Like, there are a lot of really bad things that at least have been corrected. Right. And so. So when you think about this, like, linear societal progression, you know, if you want to send your kid the best school, you want to send your. Like, why wouldn't you want to, like, create. Choose the best opportunity for the kid from a health perspective.
- [37:01]
Interviewer
Absolutely.
- [37:01]
Ben Lamb
So. So that's where I fall.
- [37:02]
Interviewer
Yeah. One of your tweets caught my attention. First of all, I didn't know elephants could get herpes.
- [37:07]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. But it's actually. It's actually the leading cause of death in elephants is really ehv. Yeah. More than poaching, more than human elephant. Wow. This disease, it kills about 20% of elephants every single year. It's the number one killer of elephants.
- [37:21]
Interviewer
Herpes.
- [37:21]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. And this type of herpes called ehv, Endothelial herpes. And so what's interesting is. And they get it. It's also terrible, it kills baby elephants. So it kills them at the time of weaning, which is just awful. Like, when they're coming off their mother's milk and colostrum, which is just awful. And so. So it's not just killing elephants, killing baby elephants. It's pretty awful. And so in. What's interesting is that it's solvable by creating a vaccine. But there's no, like, you know, for, from a financial perspective, there's no, like, total addressable market for, like, curing elephant herpes.
- [37:54]
Interviewer
Yeah, there's no roi.
- [37:55]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, exactly. But. But if you're making, if you're spending, you know, eight figures, nine figures, making mammoths, well, you know, I don't want 20% of our mammoths to have the ability to get this terrible disease that would kill them. Right. It's like, that's. I mean, that's not even a good ROI perspective. Right. And so it's in our best interest to do that and then just open source it for the world. And so we worked on it with Dr. Paul Lang, Baylor College of Medicine, a handful of zoos and a couple other conservation partners, and we, we built an MRNA vaccine that's being tested already in elephants in less than two and a half years, and it's conferring resistance to the most deadly strand of ehv. All right. Incredible. Yeah. So. So if Colossal does nothing else, right. I'm like, you know, because we know there's about 5% of our audience hates us and. But I think it's pretty good in today's world. I'll take 5% all day long.
- [38:46]
Interviewer
I'm not like 30, I think.
- [38:48]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, so I'm beating you. And so it will. It's going to be interesting, the Venn diagram of that 30 and 5. Right. And so what's interesting is that like, like, if we just can get EEHV distributed, mass produced, and we get the top, you know, three to five different variants, Colossal will save more elephants than all of humankind. Working on elephant conservation for all of history. Wow, that's incredible that, with that one innovation.
- [39:18]
Interviewer
That's incredible.
- [39:18]
Ben Lamb
That's already, that's already being deployed in the field.
- [39:21]
Interviewer
Well done.
- [39:22]
Ben Lamb
Yeah. So it's hard, like, so sometimes people get, like, caught up in, like, oh, but why not just save species? I was like, well, this is not an either or or. This is an and, like, we have the ability to do both. It's like this idea that there's a finite supply of resources, a finite supply of money, a finite supply of attention is just crazy.
- [39:41]
Interviewer
That's how we were taught growing up.
- [39:43]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, but it's just wrong. It's. It's just incorrect. We were also taught other stuff, like, I don't know your exact age, but I was Taught like there was a, there was a period where they were like water, where they're like, water is the most amazing thing in the universe and it's the rarest thing in the universe and that's what makes Earth magic. There's water now and we don't know if we're ever going to find it again. There's water on, in the, in vapor on Venus. There's polar ice caps on, on the, on Mars and on the Moon. There's liquid water on Mars. I mean, we didn't have, we had to go a stone's throw away, relatively speaking, in the solar system to find this mythical, you know, ingredient of H2O. Right. No, I remember that, but it was like, it was like. But that was, that was what we were taught, right? Like that was the thought process. Right. And so like, I just believe that there's an abundance, like people that got worried about AI. It's like, no, like there was a time where people were like, well, the printing press is going to take all of our jobs. And it's like. But it didn't, right. It's just people evolved and created new opportunities. You know, like, look at like all the chip manufacturers, look at all the programmers, like all these different kind of waves of technology innovation have just created more jobs. Like, I think that colossal will help usher in a world of synthetic biology where we're engineering animals and plants and everything to coexist better. Right. Like coral, like, coral's fucked. Like the oceans are fucked, coral's fucked. And you know, heat and salinity and all these things are bad and they are, they're changing the, the temperatures and the currents of the ocean in micro fragmentation. While a lot of great smart scientists are working on that. It's a way of breaking coral and growing in a way where it grows about 10 times faster. But if the coral can't exist in where it's going, that doesn't really matter.
- [41:22]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [41:22]
Ben Lamb
So you have to insert genome engineering into coral to truly save our coral reefs.
- [41:27]
Interviewer
Yeah. Because right now they're dwindling, right?
- [41:28]
Ben Lamb
They're dwindling, right. And there's lots of smart people doing like fragmentation, doing biobanking, all that stuff. But if the vast majority of the earth body of water is changing do to us, well, then we gotta help. We gotta help. We, we have an opportunity and I'd argue a moral responsibility to step in. Right. And so, but think about this. 25 years ago, there wasn't someone that said I need to go get an understanding in genome engineering. Computational biology and marine biology. That Venn diagram didn't exist.
- [41:59]
Interviewer
Right.
- [42:00]
Ben Lamb
But it probably will exist tomorrow if we want to save corals.
- [42:02]
Interviewer
Yeah. If coral reefs get wiped out, what would happen? Would that destroy everything?
- [42:07]
Ben Lamb
It's pretty bad. I don't want to give the wrong stat, but a large percentage of marine life lives between 30 and 60ft around Coral reefs. Like, the vast majority of the ocean's pretty empty, absent like photoplankton and other microorganisms. When you think about macro ecosystems, most of them are around kind of those things. So they're critical to healthy coral reef. Reef gives, you know, is critical to the entire food supply chain.
- [42:37]
Interviewer
Would it be possible create those from scratch or would you need.
- [42:40]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, I think you can engineer. We have not done it. We get asked the coral question quite frequently and we're just busy. I'd love to start a company to do it. I just. I'm. I'm limited on time right now, but I'd love to do that eventually.
- [42:54]
Interviewer
Yeah. Because trees are another issue too, right?
- [42:55]
Ben Lamb
Yeah.
- [42:56]
Interviewer
Because we're. Deforestation is a big problem in certain countries.
- [42:58]
Ben Lamb
Deforestation. I'm very interested in plants. I have some ideas that I could go implement around plants, and maybe the next couple years I'll go pursue that. And then hopefully maybe, you know, as Colossal progresses, as some of the artificial womb work progresses, if I can get plants going, well, then maybe I'd start working on corals, because I do think corals would be really, really interesting.
- [43:19]
Interviewer
Yeah. Yeah. I love it, man. Well, dude, this has been awesome. I know you're busy, so I'm gonna let you go. But where can people support you and everything?
- [43:25]
Ben Lamb
Yeah, I mean, I'm on, you know, Colossals on Twitter or X and colossals on YouTube. So just watch our stuff. Go there. I'm on all those ch. Well, I'm just. I think I'm just on X. But yeah, you know, if people are interested, just engage with us. That's the number one thing. Like, let us know. Comments, feedback, questions. We have the craziest and greatest questions we get. All day. All day long. School.
- [43:45]
Interviewer
Thanks for your time, man. Yeah, thanks y. See you guys.
- [43:47]
Ben Lamb
Thanks.
- [43:52]
Interviewer
I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.