Tasmanian Tiger Revival from Extinction: Now Possible –Study

The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, is one of Australia's most well-known animals.

Because of a constant string of supposed sightings that has captivated the public and the media for thousands of years, the slender, striped marsupial maintains its place in Australian mythology.

According to the Washington Post, the Tasmanian tiger has been extinct sincs 1936.

Now, a group of University of Melbourne researchers is looking to take it back from extinction.

Thanks to a $3.6 million donation, they announced the establishment of the Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research (TIGRR) Lab.

The project will be led by Andrew Pask, a marsupial evolutionary biologist and Tasmanian tiger expert at the University of Melbourne.

Pask explained that the research's grand challenge is to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead.

While this is the overall goal, the biotechnology developed along the way is critical for current marsupial conservation efforts.

Pask emphasized that their research focuses more on getting things that are needed to protect marsupials, rather than playing God and ending up with a Jurassic Park situation.

Bringing Back the Tasmanian Tiger

For about 20 years, there have been calls to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger.

Michael Archer, director of the Australian Museum, pledged $57 million to a project aimed at cloning the iconic marsupial from old specimens.

In 2005, it was labeled as "fantasy" and the research fell through.

However, in the past two decades, breakthroughs in gene editing have allowed scientists to build foundational theories about "de-extinction," or the process of bringing extinct species back from the dead.

CRISPR, a powerful DNA cut-and-paste tool, presents a way for scientists to recreate the genetic code of species long extinct.

CRISPR is the heart of a proposal to bring back the Woolly Mammoth by 2027, led by the biotech firm Colossal.

In September, the company announced receiving $15 million in funding and would attempt to have the first calves in "four to six years" and rewild herds of mammoths into the Arctic.

The Thylacine Code

Pask noted via CNET that bringing back a species would require understanding its DNA code from start to finish.

Scientists would then be able to use CRISPR to alter the code of cells from related species.

Pask further explained that the Tasmanian tiger is closely related to the mouse-like dunnart, a marsupial species.

Starting with a dunnart cell, all of the DNA differences between the two species can be edited to turn it into a Tasmanian tiger.

The initial step has been completed.

In 2017, a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution revealed that Pask's team was able to decode the full genome of the Tasmanian tiger.

Pask estimated that the work required to transform one species into another will take at least a decade, and that the progress depends on technological leaps over the next few years.

Also Read: This is How Non-human Species Drive Others to Extinction 

Resurrecting the Dead

Some conservationists have criticized de-extinction projects, claiming that spending large sums of money to bring animals back from the dead could result in biodiversity loss.

The argument against reintroducing species is that maintaining populations is expensive.

For Pask, the Tasmanian tiger is a unique case with obvious advantages.

It was the apex predator of its time and lived in an environment that has not changed much in 90 years. He suggested that you could put it back into the environment and immediately see the benefits.

Related article: Scientists Map DNA, Genome Sequence to Potentially Resurrect Extinct Tasmanian Tigers