Friday 22 September 2023

I Love Posts Like This,

a huge breakthrough in RNA could see the Tasmanian tiger walk the Earth again!


 a pair of Tasmanian tigers photographed at an Australian zoo in 1933.Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty, first things first what is a Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf also called a thylacine? from Wikipedia:

'it is an extinct carnivorous marsupial that was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. The thylacine died out on New Guinea and mainland Australia around 3,600-3,200 years ago, prior to the arrival of Europeans, possibly because of the introduction of the dingo, whose earliest record dates to around the same time, but which never reached Tasmania. Prior to European settlement, around 5,000 remained in the wild on Tasmania. Beginning in the nineteenth century, they were perceived as a threat to the livestock of farmers and bounty hunting was introduced. The last known of its species died in 1936 at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. The thylacine is widespread in popular culture and is a cultural icon in Australia'

photograph By Baker; E.J. Keller. - Report of the Smithsonian Institution 1904, from the Smithsonian Institution archives, secondly what is RNA? it is genetic material present in all living cells that has structural similarities to DNA but now RNA has been recovered from the desiccated skin and muscle of a Tasmanian tiger stored since 1891 at a museum in Sweden, but RNA sequencing, unlike DNA, provides experts with real biology and metabolism regulation that was happening in the cells and tissues of the Tasmanian tigers before they went extinct, which would be necessary to de-extinct the species, so will the Tasmanian tiger roam wild and free again? I really do not know, but I would like to think so, for the full story have a look here.



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