Colossal Biosciences Plans to Resurrect Extinct Bluebuck Antelope by 2030

More than 200 years after humans hunted the Hippotragus leucophaeus, commonly known as the bluebuck, to extinction on the plains of South Africa, the petite and well-horned antelope is set to make a comeback. This initiative marks the sixth publicly announced de-extinction project by Colossal Biosciences, a biotech firm that previously introduced woolly mice and revived the functionally extinct dire wolf in 2023.

Following its goal to birth a woolly mammoth calf by 2028 and revive genetically edited versions of the thylacine, great moa, and dodo, the bluebuck represents a shift from headline-grabbing Pleistocene species. Its revival could also deliver a significant genetic boost to African ecosystems, where European settlers and Boers drove the bluebuck to extinction by 1800. Modern pressures such as climate change, habitat loss, and poaching have further threatened antelope populations, with 29 of the world’s 90 antelope species now classified as threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). An additional 62 percent of antelope populations have declined, and five African antelope species are currently listed as “critically endangered.”

“People see David Attenborough movies, and they just think of antelopes as ubiquitous running through Africa. They think they don’t need anything, that they’re like deer and there’s just too many of them. And that’s not true. About 30 percent of them are endangered with extinction.”

— Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal Biosciences

This urgency has driven researchers at Colossal to advocate for the revival of the bluebuck since the company’s founding in 2020. Lamm credits Michael Hofreiter, Professor for Evolutionary Adaptive Genomics at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and a scientific advisor at Colossal, for championing the project. “Since day one, when we were just talking about the mammoth, he’s like ‘We have to do the bluebuck. It’s just so amazing, and antelopes need help,’” Lamm recalls.

Initially, Colossal invested in Hofreiter’s DNA research on the bluebuck, alongside other projects like cave hyena studies. “We’re not working on cave hyenas, but one of our researchers is really passionate about it. So it’s cool, and it’s cool for science, so we’ll fund those projects. And that’s where the bluebuck fell,” Lamm explains. However, as scientific data accumulated, the feasibility of reviving the bluebuck became increasingly clear.

“We’ve solved assisted reproductive technologies and all the IVF stuff,” Lamm states. “We’ve solved the induced pluripotent stem cell stuff. We’ve already created the genomes and all the comparative genomics. We’re editing and we’re so bullish on the editing.” The bluebuck project is poised to be Colossal’s first de-extinction effort to reach completion with over a hundred edits to the source genome. The team is utilizing the genome of the roan antelope and ovum retrieval techniques to achieve this goal.