Mar 9, 2022 06:06 PM
https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animal...sland-rat/
EXCERPTS: Since becoming a popular concept in the 1990s, de-extinction efforts have focused on grand animals with mythical stature. [...] But even though the process of de-extinction is moving rapidly from the realm of fiction into reality, a team of palaeogeneticists say we should be focusing our attentions on more achievable targets than dinosaurs. Documenting their genomic work in Current Biology, they say they may have found an ideal candidate – Rattus macleari, the Christmas Island rat.
Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Mammoths have been missing for 4,000 years. But Christmas Island rats? We lost them only 119 years ago, when disease brought by European ships decimated their populations. Having recently vanished, the Christmas Island rat still has many closely related species living today...
[...] De-extinction work is defined by what is unknown. When sequencing the genome of an extinct species, scientists face the challenge of working with degraded DNA, which doesn’t yield all the genetic information required to reconstruct a full genome of the extinct animal. But an animal such as the Christmas Island rat, alongside its genetic cousin the Norway brown rat, is something of a goldmine for evolutionary geneticists.
In much the same manner as the thylacine and the dunnart, the genome of the living rat provides a guidebook for how to assemble that of the extinct rat. Having obtained almost all of the Christmas Island rat’s genome from well-preserved skin samples, researchers can use the genome of the Norway brown rat to identify any gaps. Then, in theory, they can use CRISPR technology to gene edit the DNA of the living rat to match that of the extinct one.
“It was a quite a nice test model,” says Dr Tom Gilbert from the University of Copenhagen. “It’s the perfect case because when you sequence the genome, you have to compare it to a really good modern reference.”
Theoretically, the researchers say there is enough genetic information available to resurrect this recently deceased species – though it wouldn’t be a perfect copy... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Since becoming a popular concept in the 1990s, de-extinction efforts have focused on grand animals with mythical stature. [...] But even though the process of de-extinction is moving rapidly from the realm of fiction into reality, a team of palaeogeneticists say we should be focusing our attentions on more achievable targets than dinosaurs. Documenting their genomic work in Current Biology, they say they may have found an ideal candidate – Rattus macleari, the Christmas Island rat.
Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Mammoths have been missing for 4,000 years. But Christmas Island rats? We lost them only 119 years ago, when disease brought by European ships decimated their populations. Having recently vanished, the Christmas Island rat still has many closely related species living today...
[...] De-extinction work is defined by what is unknown. When sequencing the genome of an extinct species, scientists face the challenge of working with degraded DNA, which doesn’t yield all the genetic information required to reconstruct a full genome of the extinct animal. But an animal such as the Christmas Island rat, alongside its genetic cousin the Norway brown rat, is something of a goldmine for evolutionary geneticists.
In much the same manner as the thylacine and the dunnart, the genome of the living rat provides a guidebook for how to assemble that of the extinct rat. Having obtained almost all of the Christmas Island rat’s genome from well-preserved skin samples, researchers can use the genome of the Norway brown rat to identify any gaps. Then, in theory, they can use CRISPR technology to gene edit the DNA of the living rat to match that of the extinct one.
“It was a quite a nice test model,” says Dr Tom Gilbert from the University of Copenhagen. “It’s the perfect case because when you sequence the genome, you have to compare it to a really good modern reference.”
Theoretically, the researchers say there is enough genetic information available to resurrect this recently deceased species – though it wouldn’t be a perfect copy... (MORE - missing details)