So how close are scientists to being able to clone a now-extinct species?
Ideally, scientists would start with a species that has recently gone extinct, and one for which we have tissue samples. Australia’s extinct Tasmanian tiger fits these criteria. The last-known captive animal died in 1936.
A team of scientists have inserted part of a bone-making gene from the Tasmanian tiger into a mouse embryo and found that it functioned properly. This marked the first time that DNA from an extinct species successfully induced a functional response in another living organism.
However, scientists are not making plans to exhibit a cloned Tasmanian tiger anytime soon. Through a gene-by-gene study scientists can hope to learn the functions of the genes from extinct species, but assembling an entire animal from fossil genetic material is still the realm of science fiction.
Reference: Pask, A. Behringer, R.R., and Renfree, M., 2008. Resurrection of DNA function In Vivo from an extinct genome. PloS One 3(5)
Photo credit: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/20/gallery/tasmanian-tiger-540x380.jpg
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