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Bits of Tassie Tiger Brought Back from Extinction
zerobeat writes "Scientists from Melbourne, Australia have managed to resurrect the gene responsible for the development of cartilage and bone from the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger. The gene was expressed in a mouse embryo so the full reincarnation of a full Tassie Tiger is a long way off. You can listen to an MP3 of ABC Australia's Robyn Williams discussing the results with the lead scientists. This is the first time DNA from an extinct species has been made to live again in a live animal."
In Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park , the dinosaur DNA extracted from the stomachs of mosquitos trapped in amber is incomplete as well, but by combining it with the DNA of modern reptiles, a decent simalcrum of a dinosaur could be had. Does this Tasmanian tiger development vindicate (at least the less out there elements of) Crichton's plot?
I for one do NOT welcome our new tasmanian mouse overlords.
On a more serious note, it would be fascinating if they could bring back a few recently extinct species. DNA degrades quite a bit over time though, so any hopes of a real life 'Jurassic Park' are probably going to remain science fiction forever.
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Hmm Good but instead of bringing dead animals to life if only they concentrate on saving the nearly extinct animals that would be real science for humanity..also there are plenty of issues to look at like alternate fuels and global warming
until some renegade security geek disables the electric fence, and T-Rex's start eating attorneys everywhere...
oh wait...let 'em run free then
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THIS is a gene!!!!
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At first I thought I missed out on a bunch of Ubuntu releases!
"So the full reincarnation of a full Tassie Tiger is a long way off."
Why? Species are extinct for a reason - they did not survive. I never understood an ecological reason for preservation of a particular species with organism count in 100s (like pandas, for example). Just think what would be ecological impact of disappearance of 100 pandas...
There might be other commercial reasons to preserve certain species (tourism, political, etc.), but if you think only ecology, then there is no need to resurrect species that are extinct or preserve species that are on the verge of extinction.
IMHO, the ecological efforts are too concentrated on preservation of individual species instead of preservation of ecological communities as a whole.
And if those ecological communities are so tender, why bother? Let it go. We can survive in concrete underground or some other kind of apocalyptic econightmare anti-utopia...
If the wild life cannot stand humans, let it go. Evolve or smth, get some oil-eating teeth, develop some plastic resistance.
"Nature" is overrated.
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I'm sure a lot of environmentalists might be appalled, but, why are we trying to bring back or defend large predator species? Tigers eat people or eat things that people could eat, and they are faster and stronger than any naked man. Same can be said for lions, cheetahs, bears, gorillas, and more. We don't need -any- of these animals to be running around in any place except for on TV. It's just too dangerous! :-)
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I'm too lazy to google or read the article, but have they ever cloned a EXTANT marsupial? Marsupial have a very weird development scheme compared to placental mammals, which have been cloned successfully.
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Imagine my surprise. . .
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If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I'm glad they're trying to bring back the 'Tassie'; it went extinct because of excessive hunting by humans. I believe that it's our responsibility to bring something back if we kill it off due to negligence. We had no hand in killing the dinosaurs however, so that's a different story. But we should try to right our wrongs in nature.
"Robyn Williams discussing the results with the lead scientists".
-Please, oh please, let that be a misspelling of the Robin Williams I know.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
on the basis of available research, I should imagine a couple of fair-haired celebrities are more likely to make a reappearance long before the Tasmanian Tiger does. After all it worked for Ripley... eventually.
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So heres the thing. If the animal is extinct it was most likely due to the fact that we destroyed its habitat. So what is the point of bringing back an animal that we will only be able to put in zoos? Shame there is no gene to bring back habitats.
...is as irresponsible as causing living ones to go extinct, and not because of Hollywood-style disasters. We have enough problems with foreign species overwhelming the native environment. Imagine some giant squid being resurrected and proceeding to eat all the modern fish in the ocean. Or a tasmanian tiger accidentally interbreeding with a normal one and the aggressive, man-eating hybrid becoming the dominant species. Besides, who is to say that the piece of DNA integrated into a mouse is not a dangerous retrovirus.
Until we show our ability to preserve healthy ecosystems populated with naturally surviving species, we shouldn't take on any more ecological responsibility than what we are already unable to handle.
The entry on Wikipedia says that sightings, while rare, are still being reported. Would it not require INFINITELY less resources to simply go catch one and get genes from it???
I'm perplexed as to why this got the green light. Can anyone clue me in?
Michael Crichton is the only author (that I'm aware of) who still writes science fiction as it was intended -- fiction based on science. He puts a lot of research into the science he uses in his books. So yes, while he does use some unrealistic things for the sake of the story (the point after all is to entertain, not be a textbook), I'd be willing to bet that what he used in Jurassic Park is at least theoretically possible.
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I'd certainly like to see a live woolly mammoth walking around
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Scientists genetically engineer bad-ass mouse.
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Apparently the closest relative to the Tassie is the Tasmanian Devil. They should try sticking the DNA into the Devil and see if that works out. I suppose that's not possible though, Tasmanian Devils are certainly not a standard model organism and getting the permission to use them would probably be difficult.
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to use a mouse embryo to clone even part of a cat gene, you insensitive clods!
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The short answer to your question is yes. It wouldn't even have to be multiple sources because any biological tissue is made up of uncountable numbers of cells, each with their own copy of the genome. So really if you extract DNA from a big enough sample and can sequence enough small enough pieces of DNA, the problem becomes simple a computational one of lining them all up into chromosomes based on overlap. With current technology we're on the edge of being able to sequence something like a Nanderthal. For dinosaurs, there might be almost no DNA left, since the fossils aren't biological tissue, so I don't know if that will ever be possible. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314/5802/1113
damn - you beat me to it!
Well, that's no ordinary mouse.
Ohh.
That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
Look, that mouse has got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
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who thought it was just another Ubuntu release...?
Don't expected to get modded up for such a vague reference. Even though the movie was quite popular, few people ever really watched it that far. Unfortunately, I actually saw the ending once, and it pretty much ruined the whole thing!
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When they get around to recreating recently extinct species I think a particularly good candidate is the Quagga. (And I'd love to have some breeding stock for it.)
One thing that the wikipedia article doesn't mention: Zebras are essentially a striped donkey, but they (and their hybrids) are generally vicious and impossible to break and train. The Quagga was an exception: It domesticated very nicely.
Others that would be fun to bring back:
- Dodo.
- Passenger Pigeon. (If only for the humor of having the eastern states paved in pigeon droppings twice a year as the sky-obscuring migration goes through.)
Both were apparently very tasty.
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