This Space for Rent

This would count as a miracle, no?

A University of Melbourne team has broken new ground, extracting genes from the extinct tasmanian tiger and bringing them back to life in another living creature.

The team put the thylacine DNA into a mouse embryo in what the university’s Dr Andrew Pask says is the first time DNA from an extinct species has been used “to induce a functional response in another living organism.”

The thylacine DNA reproduced in the mouse’s body and showed biological function, reviving hopes that the tiger may one day be successfully cloned.

ABC news, via buggery.org

I’ve been interested in the thylacine ever since I saw that (too heartbreakingly short) movie clip showing the very last one pacing restlessly around his cage at the Hobart Zoo (and how did I come across the movie clip? Well, that’s easy; I was looking for photos of K-1 (gloriously *not* extinct, even thought it’s become a sort of unnatural fusion of K-1 and K-2,) but that’s not important now.) I knew that there’s a considerable movement that believes that there still are marsupial wolves in the wilds of Tasmania, but I didn’t know about this wonderful bit of research.

Even if this line of research works it won’t tip the scales, but it’s really nice to see any sort of reversal of the increasing torrent of extinctions as humanity drives the earth into yet another extinction event.