De-extinction: scientists are planning the multimillion-dollar resurrection of the Tasmanian tiger

Scientists in Australia and the US have launched an ambitious multimillion-dollar project to bring back a extinct animal.

Colossal, a Texas-based company that last year announced it planned to use genetic engineering techniques to recreate the woolly mammoth and return it to theArctic tundra, is now working on another project, the thylacine.

The University of Melbourne received a $5 million philanthropic gift earlier this year to open a genetics lab. The leader of the lab, Prof Andrew Pask, described the sequence of the genome of the juvenile specimen as a complete blueprint on how to build a thylacine.

Australia had only one apex predator. About 3000 years ago, it was only allowed to live in the state of Tasmania. It was extensively hunted after European colonization. In 1936, the last survivor died. It was officially declared extinct in the 1980's despite many reports of its existence.

George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard, is one of the scientists who aim to reverse this by taking stem cells from a living species and turning them into thylacine cells. Stem cells can be used to create an embryo, which can be transferred into an artificial womb or a dunnart surrogate to gestate.

The partnership was the most significant contribution ever made to the preservation of koalas in Australia. The first joeys could be born in a decade.

Ben Lamm believed it was possible in less than six years to produce the first set of mammoth calves.

Lamm thinks this could be the first animal to be de-excavated.

Several breakthrough steps will have to land in order for the project to succeed. It is possible to grow a baby in a test-tube without using a surrogate, as long as the baby is small.

If successful, the plan is to return the animal to the wild in a controlled environment on private land. The researchers said they wanted to help develop technology that could be used to address the global extinction crisis.

He pointed out that the world was changing too fast for existing techniques to save threatened species. If we want to stop the loss of flora and fauna, we have to look at other technologies. We have nothing else to do. If we lose 50% of our flora and fauna in the next 50 to 100 years, it will cause our own extinction.

He said the team hoped to address concerns about the genetic health of the species by sequencing the genomes of between 80 and 100 individuals and that dealing with genetic diversity was relatively straightforward.

There was a mixed response from biologists. It was not likely to succeed, according to a professor at the university. Even if you can do it in the lab, how do you create the thousands of individuals you need to create a healthy population?

One of the outstanding questions was whether the project could do more to help threatened species. He said it would be an enormous challenge to turn a lab-created animal into a wild population.

We want to save the current species, but if someone doesn't want to fund something else, then that's fine. If we are able to learn more about genetics that can be used to protect existing species, then that's great.