Australian Clone Work Targets Endangered Species
S Y D N E Y, May 11 -- Australian scientists said today they were working on a pilot cloning project to helppreserve endangered species but cast doubt on efforts torecreate the extinct Tasmanian tiger.
Professor Alan Trounson said his small team at Melbourne’sMonash Institute of Reproduction and Development had been takingskin samples from the endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat forthe past year in a cloning project to regenerate the species.
“I think the benefit to endangered species is absolutelyphenomenal,” Trounson told Reuters.
“I think if we could prove this with the wombat, this wouldbe a model that could be used for many other species,” he said.
Trounson said there were only 80 of the northern wombatsleft in their natural habitat in Queensland state. The northernwombat is a close relative of the common wombat, a burrowingmammal so numerous in some parts of Australia that it isconsidered a pest.
Australia has announced two cloning breakthroughs in thepast week by creating a cloned merino sheep and a cloned calfusing technology similar to that used to produce Dolly, theworld’s first cloned sheep, in Scotland three years ago.
More Ambitious Project
Last week the Australian Museum announced a more ambitiousprogram to try to recreate the Tasmanian tiger, a marsupialwolf believed to have died out in 1936.
The museum said it extracted high-quality DNA from heart andliver samples from a Tasmanian tiger pup preserved since 1866and hopes to generate a cell from that to be used inreproduction.
“While there are similar extinct animal cloning projectselsewhere in the world, the Australian Museum’s project is thefirst to find good quality DNA,” the museum’s professor MichaelArcher said.
DNA is a unique genetic fingerprint and it is the moleculewhich transmits hereditary characteristics.
But Trounson doubted the Tasmanian tiger project would be asuccess because there were no species remotely close enough toact as surrogates and because taking DNA still did not guaranteea healthy cell could be generated to use for reproduction.
