Scientists attempt to bring back to life extinct Tasmanian tiger

US genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences claimed progress last week in bringing the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction, according to Sky News and ABC reports. 

Also known as the Tasmanian wolf or thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger lived in Australia and became extinct when the last known tiger died in 1936 at Hobart Zoo. 

Using a 108-year-old tiger preserved in a Melbourn museum, the scientists claimed they have drawn out a DNA sequence that is 99% similar to that of the original tiger.

Beth Shapiro, a scientist at the company noted regarding the almost complete DNA sequence that the "samples used for our new reference genome are among the best-preserved ancient specimens my team has worked with,” according to Sky News. 

Professor Andrew Pask, head of the lab for the research and restoration of the thylacine at the University of Melbourne, was cited as saying by ABC, "Because people loved thylacines, even back when they were hunting them to extinction. There's a lot of these samples in museum collections we're fortunate that we have a good back catalogue library of species to go through to find those really good specimens."

Altering the genome

The news outlet further reported that the scientists also attempted to alter the genome of the fat-tailed dunnart, a marsupial whose DNA is comparable to the thylacine's, in their efforts to near the original creature. 

Pask noted of the progress, according to Sky News, “We will be able to determine what a thylacine could taste, what it could smell, what kind of vision it had and even how its brain functioned."

In 2022, the company announced it would attempt to bring the tiger back to life.