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."

Comments

Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park

[morgan_greywolf]

Does this Tasmanian tiger development vindicate (at least the less out there elements of) Crichton's plot?

In a word: No. Grabbing one gene from an extinct species is very different than grabbing most of the entire genome is. Plus, the Tasmanian Tiger is far more-recently-extinct than dinosaurs, so the DNA is, without a doubt, much, much newer. (DNA degrades significantly over time.)

Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction

[thermian]

Reality check here, they aren't trying to create a means to save animals that go extinct. It wouldn't work anyway, because many creatures require habitat that dissapears, That being what makes them go extinct in the first place.

Few animals go extinct in a way that means they could be realistically revived. A shame, but true, so that would be a losing strategy.

Lets look at a recent example, the baiji dolphin. It is now functionally, if not totally, extinct, and a major part of the cause was the fact that their habitat is no longer what it used to be, i.e a vast, silty, *quiet* river. Now it's a vast, crowded, polluted river.
Hunting was a problem too, but wouldn't have been had not the environment changed so much (meaning if there were less humans utilizing the river). They've been hunted for thousands of years and only became endangered after the wide scale industrialization of the Yangtze River.

Same for the woolly mammoth. As interesting and challenging as the recreation of that species is (and possible too, there are still frozen mammoths being excavated with intact testicles). The big problem is that they are huge creates whose habitat is long gone. Where would they go if we made them again?

The Tasmanian Tiger is a special case, being rendered extinct fairly recently, and having it's habitat still almost entirely intact.

As for saving the animals in the first place, got a few trillion dollers to pay off the poverty line hugging people that are being paid pennies to actually go out and cut down habitats to make rich people richer? Cos I haven't.

You're toying with powerful forces here

[seandiggity]

"We know what we're doing."

Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park

[houghi]

Well, the tiger DNA is only 70 years old. The Dino DNA is 6000 years old.
There, corrected it for you. ;-)