SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian scientists announced on Tuesday a breakthrough in efforts to clone the extinct Tasmanian Tiger, saying they had replicated some of the animal’s genes using DNA extracted from preserved male and female pups.
“We are now further ahead than any other project that has attempted anything remotely similar using extinct DNA,” Mike Archer, director of the Australian Museum, told a news conference.
“What was once nothing more than an impossible dream has just taken another giant step closer to becoming a biological reality,” he said, adding that the ultimate aim was to clone a viable reproducing population of Tasmanian Tigers.
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Australian Museum Director Professor Michael Archer takes a close look at an 1866 Tasmanian Tiger embryo in Sydney May 28, 2002 that scientists have used to successfully replicate some of the animals genes using DNA extracted from the specimen. Scientists say they hope to clone a Tasmanian Tiger in 10 years if they are successful in constructing large quantities of all the genes of the extinct animal and sequencing sections of the genome to create a genetic library of Tasmanian Tiger DNA. The animal, also known as a thylacine, was a dog-like carnivorous marsupial with stripes on its back that lived on the Australian island state of Tasmania before it was hunted down by farmers who blamed it for killing sheep. The last known tiger died in 1936. (David Gray/Reuters)
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From Yahoo
WOW pretty much sums this one up. But to clarify, this falls under pdfc; pretty damn fucking cool.
To clarify further, I like this idea, and I like it a lot. Humanity was stupid enough to wipe out an entire species, well now we have gotten a little smarter and we can fix that stupid mistake. pdfc, covers it all