Hair Of Tasmanian Tiger Yields Genes Of Extinct Species

All the genes that the exotic Tasmanian Tiger inherited only from its mother will be revealed by an international team of scientists in a research paper to be published on 13 January 2009 in the online edition of Genome Research. The research marks the first successful sequencing of genes from this carnivorous marsupial, which looked like a large tiger-striped dog and became extinct in 1936. "Tasmanian Tiger" is a common name of the extinct thylacine species (Thylacinus cynocephalus), which is more closely related to kangaroos and koalas than to dogs or tigers. The last known specimen died in a Tasmanian zoo in 1936. Thylacines have played a central role in discussions about the possibility of bringing extinct species back to life, but despite the availability of many bones and other remains, previous attempts to read thylacine DNA had been unsuccessful. Miller, Schuster, and their colleagues were the first to report the genome-wide sequence of an extinct animal, the woolly mammoth, in November 2008. They next collaborated with Anders Goetherstroem, at Uppsala University in Sweden, to target the Tasmanian Tiger because, like the mammoth, it was a coveted goal of ancient-DNA researchers, who considered its sequencing unfeasable due to the inadequate quality of the DNA available from specimens. "The speculation was that the only reason we were able to extract DNA from mammoth hair is that the mammoths had remained frozen in the Arctic permafrost, but our success with the Tasmanian Tiger shows that hair can protect DNA for long periods under a variety of environmental conditions," Schuster said.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090112201131.htm

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