Scientists plan to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction

Almost 100 years after the Tasmanian tiger went extinct, scientists are hoping to bring back the striped carnivorous marsupial that once roamed the Australian bush. 

The project seeks to resurrect the animal officially known as thylacine through advances in genetics, ancient DNA retrieval, and artificial reproduction. 

"We would strongly advocate that first and foremost we need to protect our biodiversity from further extinctions, but unfortunately we are not seeing a slowing down in species loss," said Andrew Pask, a professor at the University of Melbourne and head of its Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research Lab. 

"This technology offers a chance to correct this and could be applied in exceptional circumstances where cornerstone species have been lost," he added.

The Tasmanian tiger disappeared around 2,000 years ago everywhere except for the island of Tasmania. It was the only marsupial apex predator that survived to live in modern times. 

However, in the 1800s, European settlers blamed the thylacine for losses in livestock and hunted the nocturnal animal to the brink of extinction. 

The last remaining Tasmanian tiger was kept in captivity at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. However, he died from exposure in 1936. However, it was not officially declared extinct until 1982. 

To revive the extinct species, scientists will use cutting-edge technology. First, they will construct a detailed genome of the Tasmanian tiger and compare it to its closest living relative, a small carnivorous marsupial called the fat-tailed dunnart. 

"We then take living cells from our dunnart and edit their DNA every place where it differs from the thylacine. We are essentially engineering our dunnart cell to become a Tasmanian tiger cell," Pask explained.

If this step can be successfully done, the team will use the programmed stem cell and use reproductive techniques and surrogates to bring back the Tasmanian tiger. 

"Our ultimate goal with this technology is to restore these species to the wild, where they played absolutely essential roles in the ecosystem. So our ultimate hope is that you would be seeing them in the Tasmanian bushland again one day," Pask added.

The project is in collaboration with Colossal Biosciences, founded by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church. Both are also working on a million-dollar project to bring back the woolly mammoth. 

While the team has not set a timeline to bring back the Tasmanian tiger, Lamm said it might be quicker than their efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth.