Purses made from this material could go for a great deal of money, as it could be the cream of the crop when it comes to luxury material.
Now, there’s a real possibility that handbags can be made from material beyond leather, cotton, nylon and polyester. Could Tyrannosaurus rex skin be the hot, new item that’ll go for thousands?
The thing is, remnants of the prehistoric figure are being used to create synthetic T. rex leather, which can be used to make accessories such as handbags.
To make this a reality, three companies — The Organoid Company, Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., and VML — are working on “a high-quality alternative to traditional leather that’s cruelty-free and eco-friendly,” according to collaborators in a news release published April 25.
The goal set for this “luxury fashion item” would be the first example of leather developed from an extinct species, the companies said.
The accessory should be coming later this year.
“With T. rex leather we’re harnessing the biology of the past to create the luxury materials of the future,” said Bas Korsten, global chief creative officer, Innovation & CCO EMEA at VML, the agency behind the 2024 Super Bowl “Mayo Cat” campaign and 2023’s Mammoth Meatball, made of lab-grown meat.
So, is the complicated task of getting hands-on T. rex skin achievable?
Well, the three companies might have found a way.
The team at The Organoid Company, a Netherlands-based biotech, will use fragments of T. rex collagen protein recovered from fossils to recreate the prehistoric protein and engineer the new DNA into specialized cells for leather production.
Then, another biotech company, the U.K.-based Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., will use those specialized cells to produce skin, made with the T. rex collagen protein. It will then be tanned to form T. rex leather.
“This project is a remarkable example of how we can harness cutting-edge genome and protein engineering to create entirely new materials,” said The Organoid Company CEO Thomas Mitchell.
The extraordinary material will be so useful that it could serve as a more environmentally friendly option to traditional leather, which can also eliminate “animal cruelty concerns,” the companies said.
But is the idea behind T. rex skin too good to be true?
To some, that seems to be the case.
University of Maryland vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz, Jr., considers the project misleading because, as he mentioned to Live Science, a science news site, the lab-created skin won’t be the real thing due to there being no actual T. rex skin or DNA to serve as a basis.
“What this company is doing seems to be fantasy,” Holtz added.
Also against the idea and calling the announcement a “gimmick” to NBC News was Tom Ellis, professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London.
“I doubt that our knowledge of dinosaur evolution is good enough to be able to design a collagen gene specifically from T. rex.”
Contrary to those who are against the announcement, researchers have found collagen in an 80-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, which can be used as a template, according to researchers.
In a statement to USA Today, the companies said The Organoid Company is planning to create a T. rex protein by utilizing fragments of the T. rex collagen protein from fossils.
“An important distinction is that [the companies] are starting with the language of proteins, amino acids, rather than the DNA itself,” according to the statement. “This encodes what the 3D structure looks like, and from this they can then recreate or ‘molecularly resurrect’ the DNA, which is put into special cell lines for leather production.”
From this reconstruction of ancient protein sequences, the result is T. rex leather, which is structurally identical to T. rex skin.
“A biomaterial inspired by prehistoric biology,” Mitchell said.
If successful, the T. rex leather could eventually be used to cover chairs and vehicle seats, not limited to just handbags and clutches.
“The production of T. rex leather demonstrates VML’s commitment to pioneering new grounds and shaping the future of our industry,” Korsten said.
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