Could extinct Tasmanian tigers be brought back from the dead?

Is it possible to bring back an extinct species? Scientists are taking a giant leap in that direction by using gene-editing to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger. It was driven to extinction by humans and the introduction of nonnative species to their habitats.

Researchers with the project, a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences in Dallas, suggest that this so-called de-extinction could reestablish the tiger in the wild.

Hundreds of species teeter on the brink of extinction, while high-tech solutions for resurrecting charismatic animals that humans have already exterminated, raises questions about priorities.

There is a glimpse of the last known Tasmanian tiger.

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According to the statement, the scientists in theTIGRR Lab at the University of Melbourne have identified which living animals are most genetically similar to the thylacines. The group will be able to take cells from a closely related living species, the fat-tailed dunnart, create a template genome, and then edit it to produce aThylacine genome.

Andrew Pask, a professor of epigenetics at the University of Melbourne and leader of the TIGRR Lab, believes that in ten years' time, we could have our first living baby thylacine since they were hunted to extinction. We are able to take giant leaps to conserve Australia's threatened marsupials and take on the grand challenge of de-extinting animals we had lost.

The Australian Museum says that the tigers appeared in Australia around 4 million years ago. They were referred to as long dogs with stripes because of their doglike heads and distinctive rumps, despite their name. Scientists reported in 2020 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B that the Thylacines were about the size of an American coyote and weighed up to 44 pounds.

Around the time of European colonization in the 1800s, the population of thylacines was estimated to be 5000, and they vanished from most of the Australian mainland. Thousands of tigers were killed by humans in the 1920s because they were seen as a threat to livestock. The last tiger seen in the wild was killed in 1930 and the last tiger in captivity was killed in 1936.

According to researchers with the de-extinction project, resurrecting Tasmanian tigers would be a success story, not only for restoring a species lost to humans, but also for building a lifeline for vulnerable and threatened species across Australia.

Lamm said that they will continue to contribute scientific resources to preserve the species necessary to sustain life.

It was originally published on Live Science