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A Dallas-based biotech company has nearly completed its reconstruction of the Tasmanian tiger just two years into its de-extinction project.
The last known thylacine, commonly referred to as the Tasmanian tiger, died in captivity on Sept. 7, 1936. None have been spotted across Tasmania since, despite countless expeditions attempting to rediscover the tiger.
Without the top predator intact to maintain order and keep the foof chain in check, its former habitat has buckled under pressure as wildfires, disease and invasive species thrived unopposed.
Colossal Biosciences, the company behind the de-extinction effort, has since restored 99.9% of the tiger genome, leaving just 45 gaps remaining that they ensure will be closed shortly, as reported by Popular Mechanics.
The thylacine genome was first sequenced in 2017 from the remains of a 107-year-old Tasmanian tiger pouch preserved in alcohol. However, there were too many genetic gaps to be viable.
Since then, Colossal has used a 120-year-old thylacine tooth to recover more genetic material and fill in the gaps.
“Most ancient samples preserve DNA fragments that are on the order of tens of bases long, hundreds if we are lucky,” University of Melbourne’s Andrew Pask, a member of Colossal’s scientific advisory board, told New Scientist.
“The sample we were able to access was so well preserved that we could recover fragments of DNA that were thousands of bases long.”
The biotech company has not limited its de-extinction campaign to Australia, though.
While it has partnered with Australian scientists to bring back the Tasmanian tiger, the company has also spearheaded the revival of the wooly mammoth and strengthened the genomes of existing endangered species like the American bison.
The Tasmanian tiger revival was originally announced in August 2022 with the goal of rearing the first new joeys within six to 10 years. It aims to do this by implanting the finished genome into a Dasyurid egg — a marsupial mammal family that are the closest living match to the tiger.
The first group of joeys would be raised on private land until the species grew stable enough to be reintroduced into its habitat.
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