How scientists are planning to revive the Tasmanian tiger that's been extinct since 1936

Scientists in the US and Australia have announced a plan to bring back the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct around ninety years ago. This is the second announced animal de-extinction project from Colossal, which uses breakthrough gene-editing technologies for a new wave of wildlife and ecosystem conservation. The company previously announced its plans to de-extinct the woolly mammoth and restore the keystone species to the Arctic Tundra last September. Colossal, the Texas-based biotechnology “de-extinction” company, will partner with University of Melbourne to attempt to recreate the thylacine. Let’s take a look at what you need to know: What were Tasmanian tigers? The Tasmanian tiger was a slim, striped keystone species  native to Australia, including Tasmania and New Guinea. Dog-like in appearance and with stripes across its back, it was extensively hunted after European colonisation. As per The Guardian, the thylacine was Australia’s only marsupial apex predator.

How did they go extinct?

It had roamed the Earth for millions of years before humans hunted it to extinction. As per the Scientific American, European colonizers in Tasmania in the 1800s and early 1900s wrongly blamed Tasmanian tigers for killing their sheep and chickens. The settlers slaughtered thylacines by the thousands, exchanging the animals’ skins for a government bounty. As per CNET, the last Tasmanian tiger in the wild was killed on 13 May, 1930. The last known Tasmanian tiger, Benjamin, died in captivity at the Hobart Zoo in 1936. What’s the plan to bring them back? The plan is to use gene-editing technology. As per CNET, the task begins with decoding thylacine DNA.

Thankfully, this was accomplished in 2017 and researchers now have the “recipe” or “blueprint” needed to engineer it.  

The next step is to extract cells from a close living relative – from a fat-tailed dunnart, a mouse-like marsupial that could fit in the palm of your hand for example –  of which they have the DNA blueprint. The premise is to identify all the differences between the dunnart DNA and the thylacine DNA. This is an active area of research requiring a ton of computing power and bioinformatics. But suppose they can pinpoint those differences; they will then take cells from the dunnart and, using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, build a thylacine cell. How will Australia benefit? The company claims bringing back the thylacine will not only return the iconic species to the world, but has the potential to re-balance the Tasmanian and broader Australian ecosystems, which have suffered biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation since the loss of the predator earlier this century. What do experts say? But others remain unconvinced. Mammal expert Kris Helgen of the Australian Museum, who worked on sequencing the thylacine’s mitochondrial genome in 2009, told Scientific American altering the dunnart’s DNA to truly resemble a thylacine’s will be an impossible feat and that the two species are separated by as much as 40 million years of evolution. “The idea that science could restore the thylacine is just so lovely it captures the imagination,” says Helgen. “But the thylacine is extinct in Australia and in Tasmania, and there’s no way to bring it back.” He added that some species are gone forever due to their uniqueness.

“A few million dollars [are] not going to give us an escape hatch from extinction,” he added.  

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Hugh Possingham, a conservation biologist at the University of Queensland, told CNET: “If funding de-extinction reduces investment in saving the species we have, then it doesn’t make sense,” he says. “If funding de-extinction does not compromise conservation funding, then it is an intriguing but high-risk activity.” Some were even more blunt. “It’s better to spend the money on the living than the dead,” lead author Joseph Bennett of Carleton University in Ontario told Science. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.