Multimillion dollar plan to resurrect thylacines from extinction
Thylacines could be resurrected after almost 80 years of extinction, according to the scientists behind a multimillion-dollar project.
The plan would see the species revived in just 10 years, roaming Tasmania’s wilderness a decade later, then possibly reintroduced to the mainland.
More than 50 scientists are involved in the US and Australian collaboration, which aims to edit thylacine DNA into a host cells from another marsupial.
How is this different from Jurassic Park?
Public interest in the project has been “crazy”, Melbourne University’s Professor Andrew Pask told Yahoo News Australia on Wednesday.
While the announcement has created excitement, it has also raised a serious ethical question; Just because we can bring back thylacines, should we?
Professor Pask links this concern back to the blockbuster Jurassic Park series which saw dinosaurs unleash hell on their creators after they were exploited by a corporation for financial gain.
The situation with thylacines is different because humans exterminated them and Professor Pask argues "we owe it to that species to bring them back from extinction".
Thylacine resurrection could help other species
Professor Pask believes the project could deliver widespread environmental benefits, with the ability to repair the imbalance in Tasmania's ecosystems that the thylacine's extinction created.
“(Thylacines) played an incredible role in stabilising the ecosystem in Tasmania and then when you lose an animal like that it does destabilise everything beneath it,” he said.
“So a great example of this is the Tasmanian devils with their tumour disease - it nearly eradicated our Tasmanian devil population.
“If you have an apex predator in that system, where the thylacine would have been, they eat those sick animals before they have a chance to spread that disease so broadly throughout all of the animals.
"So they really help control the spread of diseases, they're really important for that."
How technology could bring back thylacines
The project is a collaboration between Melbourne University’s Thylacine Integrated Genomic Restoration Research Lab (TIGRR) and Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences.
Scientists have access to the DNA of 50 individual animals and hope to sequence up to 100 different genomes.
This will help them get a thorough understanding of the genetic diversity which existed within the species prior to its extinction.
Thylacine genes will then be injected into cells by Colossal Biosciences using CRISPR DNA editing technology.
How extinct thylacines could be resurrected
Because the marsupial’s young are no bigger than a grain of rice, a moused-sized dunnart – which is genetically similar to thylacines – could be used as a birthing surrogate.
With the young likely to quickly outgrow its host mother, the baby thylacines could then be raised in artificial pouches which Colossal Biosciences is keen to develop.
Professor Pask believes this technology could provide benefits for other threatened species impacted by extinction events.
“Where we might lose species from bushfire, we could use the pouch to create for instance 100 koalas to rewild back again once the bush has regenerated,” he said.
“There's some really great conservation benefits to all of the technologies that we're developing, as well as underpinning our efforts to bring back the Thylacine.”
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