This little furball is helping to map a course toward the return of the thylacine – Sydney Morning Herald

And thats where the now-extinct thylacine comes in.

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Last month, US biotech Colossal Biosciences announced it would invest $10 million in a University of Melbourne team working to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction.

The funding will allow a team of about 50 scientists across Melbourne and Texas to work on the project, initially for three years.

Some of the same techniques used to map the full genome for the smoky mouse will be used on the thylacine project, including growing living cells of threatened species, storing them in a cryobank, and using the DNA from those cells for ongoing research.

The Melbourne Museum has a liquid nitrogen facility called the Ian Potter Australian Wildlife Biobank the animal equivalent of a seed bank that houses the museums existing collection of more than 44,000 tissue, feather and fur samples at minus 185 degrees.

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Cryobanking, or cryopreservation, is the process of cooling and storing cells, tissues, or organs at very low or freezing temperatures to save them for future use.

Previously, the smoky mouse DNA was extracted from skin samples from the ear. But now the institute is growing living smoky mouse cells, so there will always be a store of living DNA from threatened species.

We can preserve living cells as an indefinite resource to maintain living genomic variation, should we require it as part of animal husbandry, said Dr Kevin Rowe from the Museum Victoria Research Institute.

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De-extinction and the recovery of nature lost will only succeed if we as a species are inspired to make the investments needed in nature research and in healing nature.

The smoky mouse genome, the thylacine project and the ethical debate around resurrecting extinct animals will be discussed at the museums next Future Forum on October 6.

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This little furball is helping to map a course toward the return of the thylacine - Sydney Morning Herald