The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacinid, was a dog-sized striped carnivorous marsupial that once roamed the Australian continent and adjacent islands. It was an apex predator that hunted kangaroos and other prey.
In a first-of-its-kind experiment, researchers have successfully extracted Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) from the preserved skin and muscle of an extinct Tasmanian tiger.
The specimen, stored since 1891 at a museum in Stockholm, has provided the first-ever recovery of RNA from an extinct species. This discovery could potentially boost efforts towards recreating extinct species and help decipher the cause of past pandemics.
The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, was a dog-sized striped carnivorous marsupial that once roamed the Australian continent and adjacent islands. It was an apex predator that hunted kangaroos and other prey. However, due to human activities, the species is now extinct.
RNA, similar to Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), carries genetic information and plays a crucial role in protein synthesis. While DNA contains an organism’s genetic code, RNA carries genetic information it receives from the DNA, synthesizing proteins that an organism requires to live and regulating cell metabolism.
“RNA sequencing gives you a taste of the real biology and metabolism regulation that was happening in the cells and tissues of the Tasmanian tigers before they went extinct,” said Emilio Mármol Sánchez, a geneticist and bioinformatician at the Centre for Palaeogene tics and SciLifeLab in Sweden, who led the study.
The research, published in the journal Genome Research, has raised questions about how long RNA can survive in conditions like room temperature in a cupboard, where these remains had been stored.
The remains were in a state of semi-mummification, with skin, muscles, and bones preserved but internal organs lost.
The Tasmanian tiger resembled a wolf, aside from the tiger-like stripes on its back. The arrival of people in Australia roughly 50,000 years ago ushered in massive population losses.
The 18th-century arrival of European colonisers spelled doom for the remaining populations concentrated on the island of Tasmania. The last-known Tasmanian tiger succumbed in a Tasmanian zoo in 1936.
The story of the thylacine’s demise is one of the most well-documented and proven human-driven extinction events,” Mármol said. Despite skepticism about the possibility of recreating an extinct species using gene editing, Mármol advocates for more research on the biology of these extinct animals.
