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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."
Well, the tiger DNA is only 70 years old. The Dino DNA is 70 million years old.
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In that case why don't they bloody bring something useful like the Steller Cow. While trying to bring back the some of the native Australian species is a great achievement none of them would have the direct economic impact of having a sustainable see grazer capable of living in cold water.
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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
Well, here's the thing. When white people settled in Tasmania, they actively hunted the Tasmanian Tiger (more accurately known as the Thylacine) to extinction because it was believed that it was responsible for killing sheep and other livestock.
The Thylacine's habitat is still largely intact, and there have been numerous "sightings" of them over the years, but no hard evidence. It is possible that a small colony of Thylacines have survived, given the elusive nature of the creature in the first place, but it's pretty unlikely.
Because they've been looking for the Tassie for the last 70 years. That hasn't quite panned out. Think about it. This isn't the entirety of the world's biological research focused at one thing. It's a bunch of scientists with some backing who are doing it. And it might have incredible payoffs (better ways to extract old/degraded DNA, figure out how to clone marsupials, blah blah). To do a search would require hundreds, if not thousands of workers, combing through the entire island on foot from end to end, looking in every cave, checking out every burrow. And that ain't going to be for free, or remotely cheap. The spinoff? They might find a Tassie colony.