#deextinction

#deextinction

De-Extinction Company Wants to Bring Back the ThylacineA startup called Colossal based on research by geneticist George Church intends to bring back extinct animals. Church has long wanted to try bringing back a wooly mammoth by editing elephant stem cells to more resemble mammoth genes, then implanting these cloned cells into an elephant for gestation. But there are a lot of problems in the scheme to work with elephants, and mammoth genes are not all that fresh or plentiful. So Colossal is looking for a more recent extinction to tackle- that of the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Thylacines were a carnivorous species of marsupial that was hunted to extinction in the 1930s. There are plenty of samples of thylacine genes that are only 90 years old. While stem cells from marsupials have never been cloned, there are many marsupial species that might work for gestation. Since marsupials leave the womb at an earlier stage of development than mammals do, a species smaller than the thylacine might be about to birth a Tasmanian tiger. Ars Technica talked to Colossal founder Ban Lamm and laboratory director Andrew Pask about the planned project to bring back the extinct thylacine. -via Real Clear Science #thylacine #extinct #deextinction #geneediting

The Trouble with "De-Extinction" ProjectsWe've read about projects that intend to bring back extinct species, such as mammoths, thylacines, and quaggas. But so far, there's no Jurassic Park. Can we really bring back a species that is extinct? Projects that attempt to recreate the DNA of extinct creatures are running into problems. DNA is fragile, and doesn't preserve well in nature. Studying the genes of related existing animals is helpful, but no one has been able to find all the necessary genes for an extinct species. Other projects are breeding existing species to select for traits of the extinct version. This is called selective back-breeding. While it may result in creatures that resemble extinct species, it won't be that exact species. There is also the possibility of cloning an extinct species, but that requires relatively recent preserved cells, and has yet to succeed. However, the problems encountered so far are not dissuading scientists from trying. But when they do, recreating their environment will be a problem as well. After all, these species went extinct when they could no longer deal with the earth's changing conditions. Read about the various methods and projects that aim to bring back extinct species at Quanta magazine. -via Real Clear Science#deextinction #extinctspecies #DNA #selectivebackbreeding