Scientists in Australia have launched an ambitious multi-million dollar project to bring back to life the quoll, a marsupial that disappeared in the 1930s.
The falcon, also known as the tiger of Tasmania, is the second venture of Colossal, a biotechnology company with headquartered in Texas, which last year announced that it plans to use genetic engineering techniques to «resurrect» the woolly mammoth, and bring it back to the Arctic tundra.
The initiative will be implemented with the University of Melbourne, which earlier this year received a charitable donation of $5 million to open a genetic restoration laboratory follicle, according to CNN.
The animal, which resembled dog and had stripes on its back, was hunted extensively after the European colonization of the region. The last known animal of the species died in captivity in 1936. Despite numerous reports of its existence, the decades which followed, and amid some unfortunate attempts to prove its continued existence, it was officially declared extinct in the 1980s.
The scientists aim to restore it to Earth, taking stem cells from a living species with similar DNA, the dunnart, unknown to most of us, and converting them into «follicle» cells» – or as close as possible to that.
More than 30 scientists are working to accelerate this «enormous challenge,» as they say, of bringing follicles «back from the dead.» They are optimistic that the first newborns could be born in 6-10 years.
