The extinct Tasmanian tiger is set to be resurrected by Australian scientists who plan to clone the species.

Thanks to continual advances in modern technology, scientists are closer than ever to bringing the iconic Australian marsupial, as well as other species, back to life, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Andrew Pask, a biologist from the University of Melbourne, was part of a team who successfully sequenced the genome of a Tasmanian tiger, known as a thylacine last year.

The specimen of a four week old joey allowed experts to piece together the marsupial's 'genetic blueprint'.

'It gave us so much information about what was unique about the thylacine.

We learned more about its biology, we learned about its population structure over time, we also learned more about where it sits and how it related to other marsupials' he said.

A cloning technique developed by Harvard geneticist George Church is leading the way in de-extinction.

Church's team are working to bring back the mammoth by using DNA of an Asian elephant (its closest living relative).

'That's something that's not science fiction any more, it's science fact. They will be able to bring something mammoth-like back to life,' Professor Andrew Pask said.

The closest living relative to the thylacine, is the numbat, but there are many differences in the two species.

'You would have to make a lot more changes to make the numbat DNA look like a thylacine but the technology for making those changes has gotten exponentially easier in the last five or so years because of the people who are doing the mammoth work,' Professor Pask said.

The Tasmanian Tiger officially became extinct in 1986, despite the death of the last known thylacine in Hobart Zoo in 1936. </s> THE Tasmanian tiger has been extinct for more than 80 years — but that could be about to change.

Once considered a fanciful idea, it is now plausible that we’ll see the resurrection of certain extinct species. Continual advances in science, particularly in the field of genetics, means that we are getting ever closer to bringing the iconic Australian marsupial, and others, back to life.

Andrew Pask, a biologist from the University of Melbourne, was part of a team who worked for 10 years to successfully sequence the entire genome of a Tasmanian tiger, also known as a thylacine, with the help of a four-week-old joey preserved in a different solution to other damaged specimens.

Prof Pask referred to the preserved joey as the “the Holy Grail” specimen and allowed researchers to piece together the full picture of the marsupial’s “genetic blueprint”.

The researchers completed the genome sequencing in December last year, gaining fresh insight about the animal.

“It gave us so much information about what was unique about the thylacine. We learned more about its biology, we learned about its population structure over time, we also learned more about where it sits and how it related (biologically) to other marsupials” he said.

“It was a very, very unique marsupial species. The last one of its kind.”

That uniqueness is exactly why we might want to bring it back to life — but it’s a quality that also makes the process extra difficult.

Rapid advancements in technology are opening up the possibility of resurrecting certain species — or at least re-engineering something that looks close enough.

In particular, a cloning technique pioneered by Harvard geneticist George Church which is not too dissimilar to that imagined in Jurassic Park is at the forefront of the de-extinction movement.

His team is working to bring back the mammoth by using the DNA of its closest living relative, the Asian elephant, to essentially fill in the gaps of the mammoth DNA.

“That’s something that’s not science fiction any more, it’s science fact,” Prof Pask said. “They will be able to bring something mammoth-like back to life.” And it could one day open the floodgates for resurrecting other lost species.

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“The thing with the mammoth is, there is a very closely related living species around still — the elephant — which makes the task much easier,” Prof Pask said.

“What you have to do is take that elephant DNA and make all the changes you see in the mammoth genome on the elephant’s genetic blueprint. Basically you’re just editing the (elephant) DNA to make it look like a mammoth.”

The fewer changes you have to make, the easier it is.

However when it comes to the thylacine, there’s nothing really that closely related any more. The closest living relative is the numbat but it’s still quite different.

“You would have to make a lot more changes to make the numbat DNA look like a thylacine but the technology for making those changes has gotten exponentially easier in the last five or so years because of the people who are doing the mammoth work,” Prof Pask said.

It’s foreseeable as the technology improves, it would be able to be applied to bringing back the thylacine. Or, more accurately, a numbat/thylacine hybrid which takes on the appearance and attributes of a Tasmanian tiger.

The major development in this field has been the advent of CRISPR-Cas9 which is essentially a tool being used by genetic engineers to introduce enzymes that are used by bacteria to target and destroy foreign DNA.

CRISPR has been referred to as a kind of “molecular scissors” that allow scientists to easily, and more cheaply, edit DNA.

“That’s really the major advancement,” Prof Pask said.

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However CRISPR technology is still in its infancy and has only been used by scientists to edit genes for the past five years or so. Because tweaking the DNA of a numbat to produce something closer to a thylacine would require about 10 times the changes compared to the elephant/mammoth project, advancements in our understanding of the technology and DNA itself would be required before scientists set about trying to bring back the thylacine.

At this point, researchers will be waiting to see the long-term results of the mammoth project before they start applying the same technique to other extinct animals.

“We’ll wait and see what it looks like, how it behaves and all of those things and whether we could apply that same technology,” Prof Pask said.

But if it does come to pass, our continent could once again be host to one of Australia’s most iconic lost species.

The thylacine vanished from the Australian mainland about 3000 years ago. A thylacine population survived in Tasmania long after the demise of their mainland cousins, but a bounty was placed on their heads in the 19th century because they were believed to be responsible for sheep deaths.

The population went into rapid decline. The Tasmanian government introduced official protection for the species in 1936, but came too late. Just two months later, the last known thylacine died in captivity.

Searches for the thylacine have continued ever since, with some enthusiasts adamant they have seen living tigers in recent decades, but of course any proof has been lacking. </s> A major scientific search is underway in Queensland, Australia for the Tasmanian tiger,A series of possible 'plausible' sightings have triggered hope a rare species has returned from the brink.Camera traps are being deployed across Cape York Peninsula by James Cook University researchers to survey sites where the creature, also known as the Tasmanian wolf, was reportedly spotted.Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, the last of the thylacine species is thought to have died in a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania in 1936.Revived interest in the long-lost creature was sparked after a former tourism operator captured a sighting and contacted local experts.Professor Bill Laurance of James Cook University told ABC News "He was quite detailed in terms of his descriptions of eye shines and aspects of the body pattern and movements."A similar description at a separate, remote location in Far North Queensland was offered by a former National Parks Service ranger, reported Australian Geographic Over fifty hi-tech cameras baited with lures will now be set secretly across two undisclosed sites in the hope of finding the long-lost thylacine."We're not worried too much about legitimate scientists [doing that], but we're a little worried about what you might call the 'yobbo effect' — where somebody hears about it and then wants to go and shoot one of these things," Professor Laurance told ABC of their decision to stay tight lipped on specific locations.Last year the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia released footage from 2008 of an apparent Tasmanian tiger roaming the wilds of southern Victoria.Laurance admits the chances of finding the Tasmanian tiger are slim but he hopes the expedition will provide valuable insights into regional biodiversity, where mammal populations are declining at an alarming rate.However there is a success-rate in rediscovering a lost species in the region. It was reported just last month that endangered northern bettongs were found in in Far North Queensland where it was previously believed they had died out.
Biologists at the University of Melbourne announce plans to clone the extinct thylacine (Tasmanian tiger).