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Tassie Tiger DNA Brought to Life
A genetic fragment of Australia's extinct Tasmanian tiger has been brought back to life by Melbourne researchers.
Dr Andrew Pask and Professor Marilyn Renfree from the University of Melbourne have inserted part of a gene involved in bone growth from the fabled animal into mice, and confirmed that it functioned.
"We've brought a fraction of this extinct genome back to life," Pask, at the Department of Zoology, says. "No one has done this in a living organism before."
The Tasmanian tiger or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was a large, meat-eating native Australian marsupial that was hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 1900s.
The last-known animal died in captivity in the Hobart Zoo in 1936.
The latest breakthrough, which is published this week in the journal PLoS One, is the culmination of nine years of effort by the team.
ABC.NET: September 2008