The last known thylacine, the largest marsupial carnivore in recent times, died at Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania in 1936. But the animal has recently been the target of de-extinction effortsand now a team of researchers has managed to recover the creature’s RNA—this is the first time that such a feat has been accomplished for an extinct species.
Researchers extracted, sequenced and analyzed RNA (ribonucleic acid) from an approximately 130-year-old thylacine (Cynocephalus thylacinus) specimen kept at the Natural History Museum in Stockholm. The team’s research describing recovery and its usefulness was published today in Genome research.
“Our study is unique in this sense because we were able, for the first time, to sequence the RNA of an extinct species, the Tasmanian tiger,” said Emilio Mármol-Sánchez, a paleogeneticist at Stockholm University and the Center of Paleogenetics in Stockholm. and the study’s lead author, in an email to Gizmodo. “This is the first time we can get a glimpse into the actual biology and metabolism of Tasmanian tiger cells just before they die.”
Like DNA, RNA is a molecular structure composed of nucleotides. RNA is single-stranded and is used in protein synthesis and carries genetic material in some viruses. In the recent study, researchers identified RNA from the skin and skeletal muscle tissues of the desiccated thylacine specimen that encoded proteins.
The thylacine, also called the Tasmanian tiger or wolf marsupial, was a carnivorous marsupial endemic to Tasmania and, in the more ancient past, Australia. It was excessively hunted in Tasmania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after being accused by the Tasmanian government of killing livestock. The animal was also driven to extinction due to habitat loss and the introduction of disease, according to the National Museum of Australia.
Recently, the “de-extinction” society Colossal Biosciences said he would attempt to produce a substitute species for the thylacine and introduce it into the forests of Tasmania, which the species inhabited a century ago. Colossal also says it intends to create proxy species for the woolly mammoth and the dodo birdemblematic species which disappeared approximately 4,000 and approximately 350 years ago respectively.
But all the talk of deextinction is just the backdrop to the team’s recent RNA research, not the focus. “Resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger, or in other words, its deextinction, was not and is not the goal of our research,” Mármol-Sánchez said. However, he added, “any scientific developments needed to resurrect or bring extinct species back to life are sure to benefit science and society at large, from gene editing technology to infertilization in vitro or the computer tools necessary for data analysis. »
Thylacine was considered a good proof-of-concept target for the team, an idea that clearly paid off given the results. But researchers’ understanding of extinct and extant viruses could also benefit from this type of RNA recovery.
“In the future, we may be able to recover RNA not only from extinct animals, but also from the genomes of RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV2 and their evolutionary precursors from bat skins and d “other host organisms preserved in museum collections,” said Love Dalén. , an evolutionary geneticist at Stockholm University and the Center for Paleogenetics, in a university release.
With the number of extinct creatures preserved in museums, the recovery of RNA from other species could soon follow that of the thylacine. Ancient DNA studies have come a long way in recent years, both in animals and in animals. human population studies– and similarly, ancient studies of RNA may soon follow.
More: The building blocks of RNA spotted at the center of the Milky Way
