Emily Chan
Scientists have used a century-old pickled fossil skull to reconstruct the most complete Tasmanian tiger genome yet. It could help bring the extinct species back to life.
The effort was led by the company Colossal Biosciences. It was made possible due to a 110-year-old head that was preserved in ethanol.
The well-preserved specimen allowed the researchers to assemble most of its DNA sequence, along with strands of RNA that show which genes were active in the animal’s tissues at the time of its death.
Many experts believed it was impossible to reconstruct a full genome from ancient samples, but this new project proved them wrong.
The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), was a carnivorous marsupial that played a vital role in the Tasmanian ecosystem. By 1936, it became extinct after decades of being hunted by humans.
Since the species went extinct fairly recently, there are still many well-preserved specimens stored in museum collections, and research centers all over the world that can be used for their de-extinction process.
The newly constructed genome is similar in size to a human genome. It is made up of three billion base pairs of nucleotides, which are the molecules that serve as the fundamental building blocks of DNA.
The DNA sequence still has 45 gaps. The scientists hope to be able to fill them in with further sequencing in the months to come.
The RNA fragments discovered in the pickled head helped the researchers determine the genes that were active in different tissues when the thylacine was alive. They then can figure out how the creature’s brain functioned and what it could see, smell, and taste.
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