Australian researchers are working on a multi-million dollar project to resurrect the Tasmanian Tiger. The controversial plan is backed by Hollywood heavyweights, the Hemsworth brothers, but some have accused scientists of playing God. 7NEWS
the striped carnivorous marsupial, officially known as a thylacine, which once roamed the Australian bush.Watch the latest News on Channel 7 or stream for free onThe ambitious project will harness advances in genetics, ancient DNA retrieval and artificial reproduction to bring back the animal.
The project is a collaboration with Colossal Biosciences, founded by tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church, who are working on an equally ambitious, if not bolder,The thylacine disappeared about 2000 years ago virtually everywhere except Tasmania. As the only marsupial apex predator that lived in modern times, it played a key role in its ecosystem, but that also made it unpopular with humans.
“We then take living cells from our dunnart and edit their DNA every place where it differs from the thylacine,” Pask explained.The Tasmanian tiger was a carnivorous marsupial found in Australia and New Guinea until its extinction in the 1930s.Once the team has successfully programmed a cell, Pask said stem cell and reproductive techniques involving dunnarts as surrogates would “turn that cell back into a living animal”.
The techniques could also help living marsupials, such as the Tasmanian devil, avoid the thylacine’s fate as they grapple with intensifying bushfires as a result of the climate crisis. “However, we still lack the technology to take that tissue - create marsupial stem cells - and then turn those cells into a living animal. That is the technology we will develop as a part of this project.”Tom Gilbert, a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s GLOBE Institute, said there were significant limitations to de-extinction.
“We are unlikely to get the full genome sequence of the extinct species, thus we will never be able to fully recreate the genome of the lost form. There will always be some parts that can’t be changed,” Gilbert said via email.It’s possible, he said, that a genetically imperfect hybrid thylacine could have health problems and might not survive without a lot of help from humans.
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