Bits of Tassie Tiger Brought Back from Extinction

zerobeat writes "Scientists from Melbourne, Australia have managed to resurrect the gene responsible for the development of cartilage and bone from the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger. The gene was expressed in a mouse embryo so the full reincarnation of a full Tassie Tiger is a long way off. You can listen to an MP3 of ABC Australia's Robyn Williams discussing the results with the lead scientists. This is the first time DNA from an extinct species has been made to live again in a live animal."

Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park

[dreamchaser]

Probably not, but it makes for interesting thought experiments. I would not use reptiles though. Birds are probably far closer genetically to dinosaurs than any living reptiles are today. Some might even say that dinosaurs didn't really die off; they evolved into birds and lived on in that manner.

Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park

[morgan_greywolf]

Does this Tasmanian tiger development vindicate (at least the less out there elements of) Crichton's plot?

In a word: No. Grabbing one gene from an extinct species is very different than grabbing most of the entire genome is. Plus, the Tasmanian Tiger is far more-recently-extinct than dinosaurs, so the DNA is, without a doubt, much, much newer. (DNA degrades significantly over time.)

Re:Why?

[Jellybob]

The panda is an excellent example. They just weren't made to survive.

They need to eat constantly, because they get hardly any benefit from eating bamboo shoots, which they are unable to digest properly.

But they're too damn picky to eat anything but bamboo.

Anything that isn't willing to eat food capable of keeping it alive reliably deserves to die out, no matter how cute and cuddly it is.

Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction

[esocid]

All biologists/geneticists don't work on one project you know. There are people out there who do that "real science for humanity." But you may want to start asking why politicians and corporations don't try to fund research that investigates those topics, and not that laughable bill that was passed in the US not long ago which basically just subsidized more corn farmers.
Not trolling here, just wish this ethanol kick would end because it isn't feasible. Just look at the numbers [umn.edu].

Now back to the topic at hand. Helping revive an indigenous species which was wiped out by humans is beneficial to their problems with invasive species such as foxes. I'm not saying they will eat rabbits and rats, but it will add some more stabilization to the food web, and hopefully won't target the dingoes.

Re:Why?

[UbuntuDupe]

Troll accounts are extinct for a reason - they did not survive the onslaught of downmods. I never understood a discursive reason for preservation of a particular account with insightful comment ratios in the hundredths (like yours, for example). Just think what would be signal/noise impact of your account's karma trashing...

There might be other reasons to preserve certain accounts (point, laugh, etc.) but if you think only about useful discussions, there is no need to preserve accounts that have been moderated into oblivion.

IMHO, the benefits would be too concentrated on preservation of an individual account instead of perservation of the value of the slashdot community as a whole.

And if those troll accounts require too much deliberate upkeep from good-guy moderators, why bother? Let it go. We can thrive on other websites if we let the wrong accounts get trashed.

If you account cannot stand downmodding, let it go. Mature, or stop flagrantly trolling.

"Trolls" are overrated.

Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction

[thermian]

Reality check here, they aren't trying to create a means to save animals that go extinct. It wouldn't work anyway, because many creatures require habitat that dissapears, That being what makes them go extinct in the first place.

Few animals go extinct in a way that means they could be realistically revived. A shame, but true, so that would be a losing strategy.

Lets look at a recent example, the baiji dolphin. It is now functionally, if not totally, extinct, and a major part of the cause was the fact that their habitat is no longer what it used to be, i.e a vast, silty, *quiet* river. Now it's a vast, crowded, polluted river.
Hunting was a problem too, but wouldn't have been had not the environment changed so much (meaning if there were less humans utilizing the river). They've been hunted for thousands of years and only became endangered after the wide scale industrialization of the Yangtze River.

Same for the woolly mammoth. As interesting and challenging as the recreation of that species is (and possible too, there are still frozen mammoths being excavated with intact testicles). The big problem is that they are huge creates whose habitat is long gone. Where would they go if we made them again?

The Tasmanian Tiger is a special case, being rendered extinct fairly recently, and having it's habitat still almost entirely intact.

As for saving the animals in the first place, got a few trillion dollers to pay off the poverty line hugging people that are being paid pennies to actually go out and cut down habitats to make rich people richer? Cos I haven't.

Re:Why?

[ChuckSchwab]

Anything that isn't willing to eat food capable of keeping it alive reliably deserves to die out, no matter how cute and cuddly it is.

You're ignoring the fitness value of its cuteness/cuddliness.

Why do you think we kept cats around for so long? ;-)

Good thing

[Raere]

I'm glad they're trying to bring back the 'Tassie'; it went extinct because of excessive hunting by humans. I believe that it's our responsibility to bring something back if we kill it off due to negligence. We had no hand in killing the dinosaurs however, so that's a different story. But we should try to right our wrongs in nature.

Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park

[pleappleappleap]

Who says they didn't? Do you speak dinosaur?

Michael Crichton

[Totenglocke]

Michael Crichton is the only author (that I'm aware of) who still writes science fiction as it was intended -- fiction based on science. He puts a lot of research into the science he uses in his books. So yes, while he does use some unrealistic things for the sake of the story (the point after all is to entertain, not be a textbook), I'd be willing to bet that what he used in Jurassic Park is at least theoretically possible.

Re:Why?

[demallien2]

The justification for preserving species is not because we feel guilty, but because biodiversity has tangible benefits for us. Large species, such as the panda, are excellent indicators for the health of an entire eco-system. As others have noted, animals such as the banji or the panda, or the orangutan go instinct not because of direct human action, but because they no longer have an ecosystem in which to live. That ecosystem may have plants in it that contain the genes that produce a protein that cures MS, or protects rice from a mutated fungus, etc.

It's not guilt, but self-interest that is the main justification for current conservation efforts.

Re:Michael Crichton

[FesterDaFelcher]

who still writes science fiction as it was intended -- fiction based on science.

You're right, the "Manifesto of Science Fiction Writers" from the 1600's clearly stated that the intent of science fiction was to base fiction on science.

Come on. People write books. Those books must be categorized in order to sell. There's no great conspiracy trying to ruin the science fiction genre and subjugate your reading habits. Take off the tinfoil hat.

Re:Why?

[SpinyNorman]

The individual species (esp. large cuddly ones like Pandas) may be the poster children of species preservation, but really it's more a matter of habitat preservation and ecosystem preservation in general rather than whether any one given species makes a difference. Would it really matter if the Bamboo forests in Japan all disappeared and the Pandas with them? ... maybe not in terms of Pandas and Bamboo, but who knows what the knock-on or unexpected effects of losing that would be, or of losing a large percentage of the amazonian jungle, etc. Do we care if global temperatures rise by a few degrees due to deforestatation or greenhouse gases? Maybe not on the level of temperatures, but what if that caused global fish stocks to crash, or fresh water supplies to disappear?

As far as the "poster children", I think there is still good reason to preserve them for their own sake. See how interested people are now in the Tasmanian Tiger which isn't even that different looking to other extant species... Don't you think it'd be a shame if the next generation of children grow up in a world where large species like Pandas, Rhinos, Elephants, Gorillas etc only exist as stuffed specimens in museums? In fact I'm sure we've already all but irrecoverably ensured the demise of that particular group. We're essentially at the stage where the Tasmanian Tiger was only known from a few examples in zoos and rumored sightings in the wild, until eventually all the zoo specimens had died too.

We're currently in the middle of what is probably the largest and quickest de-speciation "extinction event" the planet has ever known - something that makes the Permian extinction look like a non-event. From the timescale perspective of millions (or tens/hundreds of millions) of years this will only be an intersting point way back in history that our descendents (if our genetic lineagee survives that long) may ponder about, but on the human timescale of our own lifetime, and that of our children and grandchildren, it sure seems a shame to be taking such a giant shit in our own back yard.

Re:Resurrecting ancient extinct species...

[rantingkitten]

This isn't some species from the ancient past that went extinct through the normal course of things. This is an animal that was doing just fine until humans showed up and hunted them into near-extinction over a period of about a thousand years.

By the 30s there weren't many left, and only in Tasmania, and we finished them off by placing bounties on them to keep them from attacking sheep. Not to mention the ever-growing destruction of habitat by our farming efforts, competition with the dogs we brought with us, and so forth.

Humans are almost entirely responsible for wiping out the Tasmanian tigers. If we could bring them back, I think we have an ethical obligation to do so, and I'd argue that for any species whose extinction can be directly attributed to human meddling.

Re:Michael Crichton

[justinlee37]

If the fiction is not based in science, then it should be classified as fantasy, not science fiction. We don't think there's a conspiracy -- we just think people are too stupid to categorize correctly.

Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park

[Skippy_kangaroo]

I think you are indulging in a bit of creative reinterpretation of history:

1933 Last wild Thylacine captured
1936 Last Thylacine in captivity dies
1936 Thylacine added to list of protected wildlife
1953 DNA discovered

Given that DNA and its chemical structure was unknown in the 1930s - when it really mattered - they could not have been choosing to use alcohol because it did not degrade DNA. Interesting story but no banana.

Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction

[ignavus]

"and having it's habitat still almost entirely intact"

But we are trying to chop it down as fast as we can.