It’s been decades since the Australian jaguar, commonly known as the Tasmanian jaguar, was declared extinct, and scientists say they’ve made significant progress as they search for ways to bring back the carnivore.
Phenomenal Bioscience on Thursday press release She said the reconstructed thylacine genome is approximately 99.9% complete, with 45 gaps that they will work to fill through additional sequencing in the coming months. The company also isolated long RNA molecules from a 110-year-old preserved head that had been skinned and preserved in ethanol.
“The thylacine samples used in our new reference genome are among the best-preserved ancient samples my team has worked with,” said Beth Shapiro, chief science officer at Colossal and director of the Paleogenomics Laboratory at UCLA, where the samples were processed. “It’s rare to have a sample that allows you to push the envelope on ancient DNA methods this far.”
Efforts to bring back the Tasmanian tiger
Preserving a whole Tasmanian tiger’s head means scientists can study RNA samples from many important tissue areas, including the tongue, nasal cavity, brain and eye. It will allow researchers to determine what a thylacine can taste and smell, as well as what kind of vision it has and how its brain works, according to Andrew Park, a member of Colossal’s scientific advisory board and a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s TIGRR laboratory. .
“We are getting closer every day to being able to reintroduce Tasmanian tigers into the ecosystem – which is of course a huge benefit for conservation as well,” Pask said.
Bask talks to 60 minutes Earlier this year, researchers said researchers were working with the Tasmanian tiger’s closest living relative — a small marsupial called the fat-tailed dunart — as a way to bring back the animal.
“But this little donarte is a ferocious carnivore, even though it is very small,” Pask said. “It’s a very good alternative for us to be able to do all this editing.”
Pask told 60 Minutes that scientists compared the DNA of Donarte and Nielsen. From there, it’s a matter of inserting and editing the DNA to turn a thick-tailed Donartian cell into a thylacine cell.
Colossal Biosciences said Thursday that it has edited out more than 300 unique genetic changes in Donnaert’s cell, making it “the most edited animal cell to date.”
“We are already pushing the frontiers of de-extinction techniques, from innovative ways to find regions of the genome that drive evolution to new approaches to determining gene function. We are in the best place ever to reconstruct this species,” Pask said. “Using the most comprehensive genomic resources and best-informed experiments to determine function.”
Efforts to help revive the Tasmanian tiger are not limited to Australia. Last year scientists RNA recovered and sequenced From a 130-year-old Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in the Natural History Museum in Sweden.
How did the Tasmanian tiger die?
Tasmanian tigers have roamed Tasmania for thousands of years. Despite the Tasmanian tiger’s nickname, the carnivores were marsupials, such as kangaroos, koalas, and Tasmanian devils.
The local government in the late 1800s paid bounties to hunters offering Tasmanian tiger carcasses because the animals were eating farmers’ sheep, 60 Minutes previously reported. By the mid-1930s, the Tasmanian tiger population had dwindled to a single tiger at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital. He died there in 1936.
Likewise, Australia has allowed and approved the culling of kangaroos Thousands of kangaroos die Over the years. Officials said the kangaroo population was eating through the grassy habitat of the endangered species. Officials have also warned in the past that there is not enough food to feed large numbers of kangaroos.
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