Coming Back Soon... The Tasmanian Tiger?

adoll writes: "Melbourne's The Age is reporting that DNA has been extracted from a 110 year old Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) bone. Scientists are now wondering if genes can be implanted into eggs of an existing species and born to surrogate mothers (numbat and Tasmanian devil are mentioned as possible hosts). The last tiger died in Hobart, Tasmania on September 9, 1936. It was believed the tigers were hunted to extinction (CD: Thems was good eatin) on Tasmania, but unconfirmed sighting have persisted to this day".

Comments

Genes aren't the only thing.

[MsWillow]

OK, they implant the genes into a new cell, and hope it turns into the critter. However, that's utterly ignoring the mitochondrial DNA, which also makes the animal unique. Unless they have that, *and* remove all the mitochondrial DNA from the new cell, what they'll get is an erzatz animal, one that may or may not be close enough to the original to give the desired results.

This is the same reason why, even though frozen Wooly Mammoths can be found in Siberia, they have yet to make a new living mammoth. Jurassic Park totally ignored this whole point, which, to me, made the whole premise rather lame :(

Re:Genes aren't the only thing.

[biohazard99]

mitochondrial DNA is less subject to variation as chromosonal, as any changes would have to be as a result of error-based mutation instead of recombination. If the speciation of the "Tasmanian" marsupials occured fairly recently in time, a suitably close surrogate "mother" should be found.

Is it really extinct?

[m_evanchik]

Then again, there is some debate over whether the thylacine is truly extinct.

Cross-species cloning

[Overcoat]

Cross-species cloning, the technique they want to use with the Tasmanian tiger, was successfully performed this past January using an endangered bull called a gaur, but that was using a living DNA donor, as opposed to extracting DNA from a century-old bone.

A tasmanian tiger would be cool, but personally I'd rather see the giant wombats mentioned at the end of the article.

A video clip of a Tasmanian Tiger...

[antdude]

This Tour of Tasmania: Tasmania Tiger Web page shows the last photograph of this tiger in captivity and a video clip. Both picture and video clip are black and white though. The wide mouth shot amazes me. :)

Thylacine Facts

[ChaoticCoyote]

Thylacines were not hunted as food; they were deliberately exterminated by European immigrants because Thylacines killed domestic sheep.

For more information on Thylacines, check out this article by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service.

It wouldn't hurt the Slashdot editors to show a little maturity by researching their flippant comments before making bogus statements. Trying some professional journalism would do wonders for Slashdot's credibility.