In 2023, the US marketing agency VML helped promote a giant meatball made from the lab-grown flesh of a woolly mammoth. They chose the woolly mammoth as it symbolized the loss that occurs from climate change. The same marketing agency has recently collaborated with a couple of biotech startup companies to produce something even stranger. Working together with The Organoid Company and Lab-Grown Leather, the aim of the project is to create a very unique leather. According to their fascinating press release, this lab-grown leather would be based on the fossil remnants of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The team considers T. Rex leather a “more sustainable and ethical future for the luxury materials industry”. But, as intriguing as this idea might seem, is it even possible?
Can They Really Create T. Rex Leather?
So, who are the companies behind the T. Rex leather project? The Organois Company is a genomic engineering startup based in the Netherlands. Lab-Grown Leather specializes in scaffold-free biomaterials and is a UK-based startup. Along with VML, they aim to create a type of leather that avoids the unnecessary suffering of animals, deforestation, and the chemical processes involved in current manufacturing processes. In their press release, they stated that they want to create a leather that will offer the “natural durability, repairability, and the tactility expected in high-end leather goods.” While this all sounds rather promising, their press release also makes some questionable assertions. They claim that the T. Rex leather will be engineered using T. Rex DNA.
However, scientists have not yet extracted any DNA from any dinosaur fossils. The problem is that DNA doesn’t survive for longer than a million years before degrading, even in very well-preserved specimens. In fact, the oldest DNA fragments currently on record are approximately 1.6 million years old and were extracted from Siberian mammoth molars. The Tyrannosaurus Rex, on the other hand, went extinct around 66 million years ago! Therefore, it seems highly unlikely that they would be able to extract any DNA from a fossil specimen. So, if not really extracted from DNA, what will act as the blueprint for lab-grown T. Rex leather? Well, apparently, it has to do with T. Rex collagen – yet even this seems unlikely.
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T. Rex Leather From Collagen?
Bundled into fibers, collagen is a protein abundantly found in vertebrate bodies and gives leather its defining features. Type 1 collagen can be found from the surface of the skin through to the living bone core. However, these types of soft tissue are rare in fossils, decomposing over time. One study conducted in 2007 claimed to have sequenced several short peptide type 1 collagen fragments from a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil. Critics of the study, however, claimed that the researchers had accidentally sequenced alligator and ostrich collagen left behind in the equipment. Yet, though the chances are quite small, a few recent studies have suggested that type 1 collagen traces could potentially survive for up to 200 million years in certain fossils.
Even if researchers had managed to extract actual T. Rex collagen, there would still be further difficulties to overcome. In order for the collagen to be reverse-engineered, it would have to be well preserved. The collagen in the 2007 study was even too fragmented to recreate. If they did manage to extract high-quality protein, they would first need to try figure out which amino acids make up the collagen. These would then need to be translated into genetic sequences. Once these sequences are pieced together, they then need to compare them to living relatives of the dinosaur (usually chickens).
Those sequences are then inserted into the bioleather cell line genome. According to Thomas Mitchell, CEO of the Organoid Company, “By reconstructing and optimizing ancient protein sequences, we can design T. Rex leather, a biomaterial inspired by prehistoric biology, and clone it into a custom-engineered cell line”. This means the T. Rex leather may contain a few small collagen fibril snippets. While it may not qualify as actual T. Rex leather, it may still help save living species.
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