We had been cloning animals; we had been transferring genes from one animal to another of a different species. Recently, for the first time in history, genetic material from an extinct genome had been successfully transferred and functioned inside a transgenic living host.
The Tasmanian tiger has been extinct for seventy years, and what are left behind were four 100-year-old samples. With improved techniques for isolation of DNA, scientists from the University of Melbourne had isolated one specific sequence (which drives the expression of a collagen gene) in the non coding region from the samples’ fragmented DNA. (Recent reports suggested that the non-coding regions of extinct genomes might hold the most important information that defines a species). They then copied it with PCR, fused it with a reporter gene that produces blue pigment in cartilage and inserted it into mice embryos.
14 days later, mice embryos with blue cartilage in limbs and skull told the rest of the story: the DNA sequence from the extinct Tasmanian tiger is working and the reporter gene is being expressed.
This ground breaking study will not lead to ‘bringing the Tasmanian tiger back’ because the samples’ DNA were too degraded, but it definitely opened doors for further researches into gene evolution and diversity, or even cloning of recently extinct species! My question is, are we the ones to manipulate who’s in and who’s out of the game?
Anyhow, extinction is not the end of story, not anymore.
1 comment:
Sorry.. I forgot to add my name in the post!
I'm Gin Yee Ho, 41490891
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