TigerCloning

BeaverWise writes "Looks like puss and boots is coming back. The last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, died in captivity in 1936, but a team of Australian biologists believes the animal's extinction may simply be a 70-year hiccup. DNA from a Tasmanian tiger has been found, and cloning is under way."

Comments

Cool.

[Spankophile]

I wonder if they'll have to repair the Tiger DNA with that from frogs, then we can have spontaneous sex-changes and let them reproduce!

Re:Cool.

[bob_jordan]

What if they simply don't have enough?

Tiger tiger burning bright.
Two left paws? Wait that's not right!

Bob.

Tazmania Park...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tazmania Park is frightening in the dark
All the thylacines are running wild
Somone shut the fence off in the rain
I admit its kinda eerie
But this proves my chaos theory
And I dont think I'll be coming back again
Oh no.

I cannot approve of this attraction
'Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kinda mad
A huge tazmanian tiger ate our lawyer
Well, I suppose that proves...they're really not all bad

If you can clone an extinct animal...

[Panamon777]

...to what extent do you repopulate the wild? Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?

This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly. If it does, it'll have a significant impact on the Endangered Species list - don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more! It might do more harm than good in that respect.

Evan

Re:If you can clone an extinct animal...

[Suidae]

The problem with reintroducing them into the wild was pointed out quite clearly in Jurassic Park. Many behaviours of a species are learned from the parents, once a species has gone extinct, these behaviours are lost, and any cloned animals are simply NOT going to be the same.

You can make a bunch and release them in the wild, but their genetic diversity will be destroyed, and their learned hunting skills and social structure will be gone. The best we could hope for would be a bad copy of the original.

Is this the right thing to do?

[Dan Hayes]

I'm not some kind of technology-fearing Luddite (as the fact that I read /. should prove) but IMHO this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Whilst the original loss of the Tasmanian tiger was a tragedy it makes to sense to recreate the animals just to satisfy the collective guilt over the original incident. Times have changed, and there isn't a place for the tiger in modern Australia - shown by the fact that it was a dangerous menace which was hunted in the first place. Even if these scientists manage to recreate a viable population of them, where are they going to go? Back into the wild where circumstances will echo what happened in 1888?

There are valuable uses for medical technology like this, but attempting to correct the sins of the past isn't one of them. Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on.

Re:Is this the right thing to do?

[Nezumi-chan]

I'm not some kind of technology-fearing Luddite (as the fact that I read /. should prove) but IMHO this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I'm a little fuzzy as to what the Second Law of Thermodynamics has to do with "turning back the clock" (which isn't what the scientists are trying to do - this is biology, not time travel).What it does sound like is Manifest Destiny.

As far as I can see, your logic rests mainly on justification after the fact. "This species died out, therefore it was supposed to die out and we're wrong to try to change that." The same can be applied to any species we've driven to extinction, either by hunting or destroying habitat. All you need is that handy bit of sophism, "What's done is done," and everything is explained in terms of The Plan.

Pretty handy way of humanity getting off the hook for all sorts of ecological disasters, doesn't it? Sure, we're polluting the oceans, killing off the animals and befouling the earth. But if we weren't supposed to do it, then we wouldn't be able to, right? Besides, what's done is done, and thanks to a spurious reference to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it's too late to change our ways now.

Re:Is this the right thing to do?

[Mike Connell]

> It's the way things work, and fighting it is only self-congratulatory nonsense.

Not meaning to be rude, but: Utter nonsense.

"Survival Of The Fittest" isn't some great plan - it's a description of a process. You seem to be saying that we should just lie back and take whatever comes; after all, if something becomes extinct then it just wasn't fit enough, and it's somehow right that it should be dead! What if we nuked half of the planet? Oh, "Survival Of The Fittest", those creatures weren't fit enough to survive, and we shouldn't try to save them...

If you really want to base your view on "Survival Of The Fittest" as a big unbreakable rule, look at it this way. That tiger has proven to *be* fit even after it become extinct. By being an interesting creature, it is fitter than others that we might bring back. Another example: furry seals get more protection than slimy eels. Why? Because they are *fitter* (cuter).

best wishes,
Mike.

Breeding population

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

I didn't read the story very closely so I don't know if it mentions how many tasmanian fetuses (fetii?) they have. If it's a small number, though, this exercise is relatively pointless. Let's say it was one female and one male. They make 50 copies of each and breed the males with the females. The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons.

Two females and two males are only slightly better--the children will consist of three groups: full siblings, half-siblings and strangers. But the grandchildren will be (carry the one, add two) all full and half siblings? Anyway, you can see my point. They need a "breeding population of genetic samples" if they want to do more than a publicity stunt.

I should also note that while the animal produced IS a tasmanian whatever, this extinction/cloning cycle will probably result in long-term speciation. That is, X years from now (for some X less than the "normal" amount) these tasmanians will be a different species than the original. Why? Because we chose a non-random sample AND subjected the new animal to new conditions (unless they plan on releasing them into the wild).
--

Re:Breeding population

[mr.ska]

The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons.

Very true, and I considered that point as well, however, this excerpt from the article:

Once DNA damage is assessed and repaired, the tiger's genetic blueprint will be inserted into the egg of a close relative, probably the Tasmanian devil or the numbat, another marsupial, for incubation.

...changes things. What do they mean by "repaired"? I can only assume they's splice in the DNA from "a close relative" to fix it. What does that do? Instantly you have different DNA. If they can do it once, they can do it again, and make many unrelated siblings that happen to be cloned from the same base genetic material, but with repairs.

Of course, there's always the chance that whatever they "fix" will produce something other than the desired tiger. Very close, but genetically different. They will probably never succeed in bringing the tiger back, but they will succeed in creating a new breed based on the species' genetics.

Cool.

Re:Breeding population

[Reziac]

Firstoff, animal breeding is my professional field, and after 31 years I think I have a clue:

Someone says: "They make 50 copies of each and breed the males with the females. The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons."

You don't know what you're talking about. Firstoff, in animal husbandry "interbreed" means "crossbreed within the same general type". Frex, a crossbred dog would be say a Malemute and a Labrador Retriever (from two different breed groups entirely) and an interbred would be a Lab and a Golden Retriever (from two similar breeds, but still not a purebred).

Second, what you meant, to wit "inbreeding", does ***NOT*** IN ITSELF ***CREATE*** problems, contrary to popular perception. All inbreeding does is *concentrate the genes you already have*. If they're bad you get worse results. If they're good, you get better results. If you want to find out exactly what genes are really present in your breeding stock, inbreeding will display both the results of homozygous recessives (such as most colours other than black) and the results of homozygous dominance (such as better muscling in beef cattle) much more quickly -- in one or 2 generations, with no GUESSWORK required. This applies to both positive and negative traits. The sooner you know what genes you have in your herd, the sooner you can breed for OR against that trait.

Nearly all commercial livestock species have been intensively inbred for over 100 years, because inbreeding FROM SOUND DEFECT-FREE STOCK produces consistent, predictable, uniformly positive results. MOST animals in the wild inbreed to some extent, because they don't have any "moral" objections (they will cheerfully breed their siblings, in fact the tendency is to *want* to breed within animals that smell the same, ie. are closely related), and because generally there is not a lot of movement between population territories.

The notion that inbreeding is automatically BAD comes from the fact that in animals with a LOT of genetic defects in the gene pool, such as humans, ANY time you double up on a set of their genes, chances are you've also doubled up on something Bad. The average human carries an average of 25 to 75 genes for LETHAL defects. The average dog carries for one or two. Beef cattle generally carry NONE. Wild animals, per observational evidence, tend to carry FEW or NO lethal defects -- because unlike with humans who have access to medical treatment, in the wild natural selection does its job: An animal with a defect doesn't survive long enough to reproduce; therefore defective genes tend to eliminate themselves.

I'd say I was sorry about the long rant, but I hear these ignorant statements all the time and I get sick of it. I could draw an equally-valid analogy to the effect that the linux community is inbred and therefore defective.

The Puss in Boots homepage

[Dan Hayes]

... is here. I kid you not.

An interesting idea...

[Millennium]

But I very much doubt this will work. The reason: there's only one tiger that can provide suitable DNA.

The problem with this is that you can clone the tiger as many times as you like, but they all have identical DNA. That's what cloning is. For starters, that makes them all the same gender, but even if you overcome that barrier you still have inbreeding taken to its most extreme level. That would be even more destructive to the species than the unrestricted hunting of the past was.

You could try engineering genetic drift into the species, perhaps, but there are two problems with that. First, expense. You'd have to make literally hundreds of clones, all of them different, to recreate the species at a viable level. Second, you have to map out the genome to do this reliably, and for that you need multiple specimens (which the scientists don't have). So all you can do is more or less blind guesswork (or at the least, really myopic guesswork).

Then there's the woolly mammoth experiments, where they want to reconstruct the species by interbreeding clones with elephants. Again, interesting, but if you take this route have you really recreated the species, or just a fairly good facsimile? You've created something that looks like a mammoth, and maybe even acts like one to the best we can figure out, but is it really a mammoth?

Yes, it'd be a nice idea to bring back extinct species, particularly the ones for which humanity is to blame for their extinction. But the fact is, there are things that, once done, just plain can't be undone. It's a shame, but everything, even science, has limits (maybe those limits are really, really high, but they exist all the same).

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This is the right thing to do

[stevens]

this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Actually, we can turn back the clock (i.e., bring back the tiger). You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't because we can't. That's just silly. We can and we will.

Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on.

Actually, there is no cosmic plan; we learn what we can about the world through own own brains and try to get along as best we can. And humans deal with nature not by adapting (in the sense of passive adjustment), but by understanding and adapting it to us. Tiger extinct? Let's learn to bring it back. Hell, we're close to bringing back the Wooly Mammoth from the last ice age, 10k years ago.

Using science to figure out the universe around us is what we do. This is just one more example--and if it brings back a tiger, then it's a net benefit, so I don't see the problem.

Steve

Re:This is the right thing to do

[Hard_Code]

First of all there is the matter of a viable gene pool, as somebody mentioned. Either we just clone it with itself over and over and just have a freakish line of tigers with genetic problems, or we breed it with some close relative, thereby eroding its genetic uniquiness.

That's besides the fact that its habitat has probably changed. Where would we put such a thing? What would it eat (rabbits maybe)? What would eat it? I don't see how bringing back a life form just to stick it in a cage so we can gawk at it a "net benefit". That's a waste of effort, and cruel.

You're right, there may be no cosmic plan...but that doesn't mean there doesn't *have* to be one. We can make up our own, like: we shall not bring back the dead for shits and giggles. Just because we *can* doesn't mean we *should* (and this is in a totally a-religous sense). Arrogance of doing everything we could just because we could got us some of our major problems (antibiotic resistence? new diseases emerging from strange places, due to climate changes, and/or tampering with the environment). It is a very stupid mentality to think that if something doesn't hurt us today, we might as well do it. We should be thinking in decades, not weeks or years.

And what friggen purpose (other than scientific study) would bringing back a *mammoth* have? What, let them roam the midwestern plains or something?

Re:Worries about evolution

[dabadab]

"Sabotage to nature's law"?
Evolution is not a law, it is just a result of nature's laws and the circumstances. (But if you insist on your views then medicine is also a sabotage - guess most of the /.'ers would have died before reaching age 10 if it were not for today's medicine (no insult on /.'ers, just look what were the infant mortality rates a couple hundred years ago) and thus they could have not breed)
You can not sabotage nature's laws, that's what distinct them from human laws :)

And in related news....

[ch-chuck]

this technique is actually the scientific basis for the Second Coming

People are bad, mmkay?

[vslashg]

Wait. If our killing of the Tasmanian tiger was a natural product of Darwinism, then why isn't our bringing one back also natural?

Oh, that's right, I forgot. If a beaver builds a dam, that's nature; if we build a hydroelectric plant, that's science. Humans are intrinsicly evil and have no place on this planet. [end sarcasm]

All that's happened is that we've got a workable intelligence, so instead of creatures evolving to the environment, we're creatures changing the environment to suit ourselves. I still don't see why this kind of thing isn't considered nature. People seem to act like cloning is against the rules, to which I say, what rules?

Re:People are bad, mmkay?

[Sloppy]

Heh, interesting. A beaver's dam is part of the beaver's "extended phenotype." Hoover dam is part of a human's (a group of humans'?) extended phenotype. Tasmanian Tiger, which used to be an animal all on its own and probably didn't do much evolving in the presence of humanity, will now also be part of human extended phenotype. That life form will be a manifestation of human genes that create minds that want to play God. Tasmanian Tiger, descended from apes.

---

Who needs cloning?

[dmuth]

When a little body paint works much quicker! ;-)

(Yes, that really is me, just last week, actually. If anyone wants the full exaplanation, feel free to write me for one.)

Tasmanian Perspective

[Basalisk]

I live in Tasmania, and so I feel this is quite close to home. When White Tasmanians came here, there was a thriving population of Tasmanian Tigers, or Native Wolves as they were called back then. It was thought that there population could cope with the amount of hunting that was going on. However by the late 1890s, They were becoming scarce. They weren't as easy to find. The last of the species died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. It was thought that the Thylacine was extinct, as no confirmed sightings have occurred since then. There are many unconfirmed sightings every year. Some people think that there is still a small remainant colony in some parts of Tasmania, mainly the SW World Heritage Area because of it's remoteness. That part of Tassie is still very wild.
The Thylacine would probably benefit from being ressurected. If there is still a wild group, this may help to boost their numbers. I think the tiger should be brought back, not just because it is an extinct animal, or possibly endangered (unlikely tho), but because it represents a group of mammals (I think is) unique to Tasmania, The Carnivorous Marsupials. Most carnivorous marsupials that developed on mainland Australia were squeezed out by the dingo, a close relative of the dog. The dingo did not reach Tasmania and as such its CM populations were left undisturbed. The Tasmanian Devil is also a CM. However the thylacine was the only active hunter. I just hope that enough genetic diversity can be found among the 'samples' to provide a stable population.

Re:Tasmanian Perspective

[goon]

Here's some links.

http://www.nt-tech.com.au/enright/images/b_thylaci ne.jpg - rock art (Kakadu National Park Northern Territory)
http://www.nt-tech.com.au/enright/jimjim_falls_wal k.htm (source of above picture.)
http://www.bio.flinders.edu.au/thyl.htm - complete skeleton (Flinders University South. Aus.)

Re:Great news

[TheCarp]

Your making the assumption that the "Evolutionary Process" is a process that is heading towards a specific goal. As if the process has some sort of will, some plan.

Natural selection is truely a simple concept, and can be summed up in 2 statments:

1) Change happens
2) Organisms that can survive and multiply better than others, will do so.

The ice age comes, any animals that can survive in extreme cold will survive. They will adapt to it. Animals with genes for thicker fur and better metabolism will survive and pass on those genes more readily than those that don't have them.

Its simply a model for application to situations. You could say that the environment became unfavorable to these tigers, as they had more predators. They were unable to adapt in time to survive these predators.

Thats no moral judgement. That doesn't mean the tigers shouldn't exist because they were unable to survive hunting. It just means that they didn't.

Nature isn't moral. It just is.

Not with current technology we aren't...

[Guppy]

I think the article is a little vague about what we're actually capable of doing right now. First of all, all we actually have is dead, preserved tissue. Current cloning techniques need intact, living cells to serve as a nuclear donor. It sounds like what they want to do is sequence the Tasmanian Tiger DNA, and then clone (in a molecular sense) portions that can then be grafted onto the nucleus of a living relative, until you've reconstructed the Tasmanian Tiger.

This means a massive, high-accuracy sequencing job (Possible, very very expensive--but the price is dropping), and the ability to insert large numbers of lengthy sequences in a targeted fashion (Barely possible, but currently not nearly feasible for a project this large).

The replacement of Tasmanian Devil DNA (Or whatever species they start with) will almost certainly have to be done piecewise, over several generations of Devils. Current cloning techniques almost certainly will also be used, since you need to get those modifications into the germ line (There are other methods besides cloning from somatic cells, but they don't work too well).

Re:Maybe it IS possible

[Nicolas MONNET]

In principle (given sufficiently advanced genetic technology) it might be possible to identify and eliminate the recessive lethal alleles from the tiger gene pool. It would then be safe for cloned animals to interbreed.

I think that, in order to determine recessive lethal genes, you need to have a sufficiently large population ... currently , such genes are discovered through epidemiology ... so this process would be quite impossible.

Anyway, the danger of cross breeding is to the immediate offbringing. After a few generations anyway, provided the first children don't die too early, the problem should go away.

I am God. Bow down before me, bitch.

[FreeUser]

This Universe is Mine.

I am God Here.

I define superior morals as follows:

All people shall bow down and worship Me.

All people shall pay homage to Me, and believe in Me, despite the contradicting physical evidence I shall create to sow confusion in their souls. If they should question my capricious moods and inconsistent demands and proclimations they shall be cast into a dark, hot, fiery place, to be tortured for the rest of eternity.

As God, My Superior Morals allow Me to take great delight and pleasure from this. Thou shalt not kill, but I'll waste as many of you little pricks as I like.

As a final insult to the inferior beings I have created, I shall have sex with one of them (call it bestiality or incest, My Superior Morals allow me this luxury), cause her to have a child, who will suffer and be crucified, then later worshipped.

However, since I have already commanded these inferior milk suckers not to have any other god before Me, and this includes My Son, they will all be damned for worhipping him, be it in place of, or simply in addition to, Myself.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. And a damned fine way for Me to counter the ennui of endless time, being enterained by their pathetic efforts to satisfy my impossible demands, sqaundering their own pitiful and short lives in the process. Delicious irony and fantastic entertainment for the hosts of heaven.

Now sing My praises, bitch.

It's a lost cause.

[Benjamin Shniper]

I mean, just because we are no longer hunting some animals to extinction doesn't mean they will thrive in the wild anew. First, there's not nearly as much wild left, and the people probably aren't going to move away. Second, there will be no proper parents to teach proper tiger behavior to these pups. This is just a feel-good solution to a real problem - we're running out of space for humans and animals in general.

-Ben