Millions of Endangered Species Samples Could One Day Be Stored in Colossal’s Biovault
Colossal Biosciences, known for its ambitious de-extinction projects, has announced a new project that will ultimately secure frozen samples of thousands of species. The Dallas-based biotechnology company is set to inaugurate the Colossal BioVault and World Preservation Lab project, a cryopreservation facility that will be installed inside the Dubai Museum of the Future.
The Colossal BioVault seeks to support biodiversity by preserving the genetic material of endangered species, involving the collection and storage of millions of samples. According to the company, these samples will be used for long-term conservation research and could one day help restore populations of lost species.
“Thanks to the UAE’s visionary leadership, Colossal is creating the world’s first Colossal BioVault: an unprecedented global resource, a modern-day Noah’s Ark to protect and restore life on our planet,” Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal, said in a statement.
Facing a biodiversity crisis
Colossal, which made news in 2025 with its plans to de-extinction dire wolves and woolly mammoths, announced that Dubai’s BioVault is a nine-figure initiative designed to preserve samples from up to 10,000 species. The initiative will initially prioritize the 100 most endangered species in the world.
More than a million species are currently threatened with extinction. The current extinction rate is estimated to be between 100 and 1,000 times higher than the baseline extinction rate (the natural rate at which species have disappeared throughout Earth’s history, barring major extinction events), according to an editorial in Nature.
“We are losing species at an alarming rate and the world urgently needs a distributed network of global BioVaults – a true backup plan for life on Earth,” Lamm said in the release.
Learn more: Endangered mountain gorillas witness rare birth of twins in Virunga Park in Congo
Save endangered species
The Colossal BioVault will also focus on endangered species in the UAE. One species in urgent need of protection in the region is the hawksbill turtle, widespread in tropical and subtropical waters around the world; Along the Persian Gulf, hawksbill turtles inhabit nesting sites on the beaches of Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Climate change is adversely affecting these turtles in several ways, the most worrying being climate-related changes in sex ratios; If a turtle’s eggs incubate below 81.86 degrees Fahrenheit, the turtle hatchlings will emerge as males. But if the incubation temperature exceeds 88.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the hatchlings will be female. Since persistently high temperatures will cause more females to be born, scientists fear that climate change could give rise to all-female turtle populations, according to the National Ocean Service.
A January 2026 study published in the National Library of Medicine analyzed 17 hawksbill turtles from four nesting islands near southern Iran and found that the populations had low genetic diversity. The authors stressed that conservation plans for each nesting site are essential, saying that “the loss of one site could result in the loss of an entire genetic lineage.”
The rise of biobanks
News of the Colossal BioVault comes as scientists and conservationists embrace biobanking, an effort that aims to preserve the living cells of wildlife indefinitely.
Similar projects have emerged in recent years; In 2023, the conservation nonprofit Revive & Restore announced plans to create a biobank of endangered species in the United States. This project will collect samples from animals in wild and captive breeding programs and then freeze cell lines and tissues for long-term storage.
Revive & Restore announced its partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to target endangered species for biobanking. According to the nonprofit’s website, several species have already been cryopreserved, including the Mexican wolf, Sonoran antelope, Florida bonneted bat and Preble’s meadow jumping mouse.
Regarding the conservation goals of the Colossal, the company plans for the Dubai BioVault to be the first in a global network of BioVaults that will span multiple countries. According to Colossal, the Dubai exhibition will set a precedent as a “living laboratory,” engaging citizen scientists by allowing the public to observe scientific preservation work in real time.
Learn more: European wildcats are slowly making a return to the forests of Central Europe
Article sources
Our Discovermagazine.com editors use peer-reviewed research and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review the articles for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. See the sources used below for this article:
