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Scientists report progress in bringing back extinct Tasmanian tiger

Posted on by L. Dreeye
Scientists report progress in bringing back extinct Tasmanian tiger

US genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences last week announced progress in bringing the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction, according to Sky News and ABC.

The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the Tasmanian wolf or thylacine, lived in Australia and became extinct when the last known tiger died in 1936 at Hobart Zoo.

Using a 108-year-old tiger housed at the Melbourne Museum, scientists said they had identified a DNA sequence that was 99% similar to that of the original tiger.

Beth Shapiro, a scientist at the company, noted of the nearly complete DNA sequence that “the samples used for our new reference genome are some of the best-preserved ancient samples my team has worked with,” according to Sky News.

Professor Andrew Pask, head of the Thylacine Research and Recovery Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, was quoted by ABC as saying: “Because people loved thylacines, even when they hunted them to extinction. specimens in museum collections, we are fortunate to have a good library of species that can be sifted through to find really good specimens.”

Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) seen in captivity. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Genome change

The news outlet also reported that scientists have also tried to alter the genome of the fat-tailed dunnart, a marsupial whose DNA is comparable to that of the thylacine, in their attempts to get closer to the original creature.

Pask noted the progress, according to Sky News: “We will be able to determine what the thylacine tastes, what it smells, what its vision is like and even how its brain functions.”

In 2022, the company announced that it would try to bring the tiger back to life.