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Cenozoic Park: Cloning the Tasmanian Tiger
Mirk writes "The
Australian Museum
reports a breakthrough in their plans to clone the Tasmanian Tiger. The ``tiger'', actually a carnivorous marsupial, became extinct in 1936, when the last known
specimen died in captivity. Er, did I say ``extinct''?
Now it looks like what everyone thought was an extinction may be
``a 70-year hiccup'', to quote the press release. The museum's Evolutionary Biology Unit have successfully replicated individual Tasmanian Tiger genes using a process known as
PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction)."
Indeed this is a great solution if they can just get it to work properly and be able to breed the offspring. Of course as far as I know no-one has yet tried to breed animals that have been created through cloning procedures, and for a species to become viable this is an obvious must, however once this hurdle is cleared there are great possibilities as to what damage we can undo. Next up, the dodo bird.
...but they won't be.
Environmental activism is supposed to be all about preserving "Earth's delicate balance," of which extinction is a natural, and vital process.
But, of course, they'll overlook that if it means injecting a cutesy-woosty puddy-tat back into a wild that no longer finds the critter-witter necessary, because we got one over on the evil-weevil human beings.
*shrug*
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I have no doubt that careful judgement will be used in deciding what animals this would be applied to, and there is little doubt that the demise of the tasmanian tiger was caused by human interference.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the test tubes of the night,
What immortal laborat'ry
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Sorry.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
But if it became extinct in the last 100 or 150 years, chances are likely that it was humans. And it's doubtful that a whole lot of evolution would occur in that short of a timespan.
I don't think there is much wrong in correcting a past mistake.
I am the evil aardvark!
For the theoligically inclined:
Could this be classified as the dead rising from the grave...?
For the atheologically inclined:
The theologically inclined will be thinking this...
http://www.tased.edu.au/tot/fauna/tiger.html
"The Tasmanian Tiger , also called the Tasmanian Wolf, is a large marsupial native to Tasmania. Most scientists believe it to be extinct, however each year there are about a dozen unconfirmed sightings in remote areas of the state, and several reported sets of Tiger tracks."
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The University of Iowa has one of those really old natural history museums, one that was filled in the 1800's by world-travelling 'naturalists' who saw it as their sworn duty to kill, stuff, and bring back one of everything for their home museum. They've got bison and a narwhal, and even a stuffed whooping crane! But their dodo is a fake. Dodos went extinct long before the natural history craze of the 19th century, but as I understand it, there was quite a trade in fake dodos. Seems every museum wanted one and there weren't more than a handful in existence, so somebody made some bucks creating fake ones. The one the U of I museum has is kind of motheaten, but not much worse than the whooping crane, and looks darned convincing. Bottom line - it might be kind of difficult coming up with some real dodo DNA. If you just grab a random 'dodo' from a natural history collecion, you're likely to end up with DNA from a half-dozen totally unrelated birds!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
I'd sure like it if a couple of species would return to existence that were obliterated earlier.
Two examples from the last several hundred years include the great auk and the passenger pigeon.
Two examples of species that humankind hunted to extinction (since they were such wonderful food sources) include the woolly mammoth and the giant sloth.
I recall an historical account of the last great auk being killed so that it could be stuffed and placed in the British museum. The collectors also took pains to destroy the last eggs in the nest at the same time. Gives you some idea of how much our views of what is fitting and proper for us to do in the world can change over a few hundred years.
Now that there are so many of us humans in a finite sized world, and our technological means of changing the world are more influential, it behoves us to give more and more thought to the consequences of our actions.
It's really only our capability for reasoning and thought that gives us a chance of beating the other animals for long term survival of our species.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I agree with you that not every animal should be brought back... However, the thylacine is only extinct because of massive over-hunting by humans... Without human involvement, they would still be alive.
They should most definitely bring the thylacine back - but just as important they must give the animal some domain of its own if it is going to thrive again.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
from The Age
(1) "If we didn't think that (was possible) we would be wasting our time,"
(2) "After that they plan to find a suitable host - probably a large marsupial such as a Tasmanian devil or a numbat - then fertilise the host and 'cross their fingers'."
(3) "Ultimately they hope to breed a genetically varied population of Tasmanian Tigers capable of living in their natural habitat. " Although the article doest state how.
Sure you can amplify bits of DNA from the thylacine (aka Tasmanian tiger).
You might be able to reconstruct the entire genome, or at least reconstruct the coding part of it exactly and the non-coding parts of it (like junk DNA) closely enough to work.
But you still have two hurdles:
- You need to make the genome into functioning chromosomes. This means wrapping huge DNA molecules with a structural scaffolding of protein and stuff. There are also chemical modifications to some bases (such as methylation) which occur in poorly understood patterns and affect gene expression. Artificial chromosomes have been made, but I don't think we know how to assemble a stable, full-size, fully functioning chromosome yet.
- More importantly, say you have total genome sequence assembled into chromosomes - what do you do with it? To produce an animal, you also need to reconstruct a thylacine ovum (egg). A mammal's ovum is full of special genetic instructions (mRNA) and regulatory proteins produced by the mother. How will we make one? Even if we found a preserved one, nobody knows how to assemble a functioning animal cell, let alone one of an unknown type. I seriously doubt the Jurassic Park solution of "use an egg cell from a related species" would work.
To really clone an extinct animal, you'd need to have to reconstruct how the ovum worked by some kind of fantastically complex computer simulation based on the genome sequence. Then you'd have to make the ovum, put it in an artificial womb or modern day host (which would be fairly easy compared with the previous bits), and bring it to term.I think any information we can get about the thylacine is worth getting, but don't hold your breath for results ...