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

Founder Effect is a possible problem

[Buran]

The founder effect, which is the sharp reduction in the genetic variety of a population when it arises from a very small group of individuals (Iceland is an excellent example), has a great potential to be a problem here. The cheetah, for example, went through a bottleneck at some point in the past (no one knows why). Individual cheetahs are so genetically similar that organs (such as skin) can be transplanted between individuals with little or no rejection.

Unless samples from multiple thylacines can be retrieved and successfully used to clone infants, these animals will always be sucsceptible to being wiped out by a plague (since they all have the same genotype.)

And that's to say nothing of the issues with captive-raised animals that have none of the instincts that their wild counterparts would. For example, falcons that have imprinted on humans (and think they're human as a result) cannot be released into the wild -- it would be disastrous. They would never fear humans and would be unable to hunt to feed themselves.