“The genome of the extinct thylacine has been nearly completely sequenced, de-extinction company Colossal has announced. It says the genome is more than 99.9 per cent complete, with just 45 gaps that will soon be closed, it’s a fairly difficult thing to get a fully complete genome of almost any organism,” says Emilio Mármol-Sánchez at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, whose team was the first to extract RNA from a preserved thylacine. For example, the last few holdouts of the human genome were only fully sequenced in the past few years", the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger as it is known was wiped out by humans, the last one dying in 1936,
'Given the lack of any other thylacine genomes to make a comparison with, there is no direct way to tell how complete it is – instead Pask says Colossal is using other related species in the same family to make this estimate, but even if the genome is as complete as Colossal thinks and it really can fill in the remaining gaps, there is currently no feasible way to generate living cells containing this genome. Instead, Colossal plans to genetically modify a living marsupial called the fat-tailed dunnart to make it more like a thylacine', will it work? well only time will tell, but I have to admit I would like to see man made extinct species returned to their local habitat, now we know not to kill them! the article is here.
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