Are Tasmanian Tigers Making a Comeback? Science Could Bring Extinct Animal Back Through Cloning
April 30, 2018Jurassic Park could be one step closer to reality.
According to Techly, scientists might attempt to bring back the Tasmanian tiger, a striped Australian animal that went extinct over 80 years ago, thanks to a new cloning technique created by Harvard geneticist George Church. The technique includes a tool called CRISPR-Cas9 that can introduce enzymes capable of destroying foreign DNA into the cloning process.
This wasn’t an overnight discovery. It took geneticists over 10 years to sequence the extinct animal’s DNA, which is required for cloning.
With that long slog now complete, the next step would be to use gene-editing technology to put this newly-sequenced DNA on the genome of a related creature, reports Newsweek.
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If this is successful, and there is a surrogate mother capable of bearing the new creature, the resulting baby could be an animal that looks and acts a lot like a Tasmanian tiger.
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While cloning dogs is a reality, scientists have not yet cloned an extinct creature. Along with the Tasmanian tigers, wooly mammoths are also being considered for reintroduction.
Life finds a way, people.