1st time: extinct animal DNA reborn in live animal

BEIJING, May 20 (Xinhuanet) -- For the first time DNA from an extinct animal -- the Tasmanian tiger -- has been resurrected in a live animal. The genetic material proved functional in mice.

"As more and more species of animals become extinct, we are continuing to lose critical knowledge of gene function and their potential," said researcher Andrew Pask, a molecular biologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Reviving genes from extinct animals can't bring them back to life, but it could help retrieve this potentially valuable knowledge.

"This research has enormous potential for many applications including the development of new biomedicines and gaining a better understanding of the biology of extinct animals," said researcher Richard Behringer at the University of Texas.

And while the Tasmanian tiger has only been extinct for roughly 70 years, "the potential this method has for examining genes from much older specimens, in fact anything with some intact DNA, is very exciting," said researcher Marilyn Renfree, a reproductive and developmental biologist at the University of Melbourne.

The last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, died in captivity in 1936 in the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. This enigmatic marsupial carnivore was hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 1900s.

Fortunately, some thylacine young were preserved in alcohol in several museum collections around the world, as were tissues from adults, such as in pelts.

The international team of scientists isolated DNA from 100-year-old thylacine specimens at Museum Victoria in Melbourne. Next this genetic material was inserted into mouse embryos and investigated for how it functioned.

The researchers found a snippet of thylacine DNA could, like its mouse counterpart, regulate the gene Col2a1, which is key to the embryonic development of cartilage that later forms bone.

Scientists have previously isolated DNA from extinct species ranging from bacteria and plants to mammoths and Neanderthals. Until now, such genetic material had at most been "plugged into" cells grown on dishes in labs, and it had not been possible to examine what role the DNA played in development.

(Agencies)