By Tim Binnall
In a promising development when it comes to bringing lost species back to life, an Australian lab working on reviving the Tasmanian Tiger has formed a partnership with a bioscience company that is trying to pull off the same feat with the woolly mammoth. The tantalizing collaboration, announced on Tuesday, will see Melbourne University's Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research (TIGRR) Lab, which was formed earlier this year by way of a $5 million donation, team up with Colossal Biosciences, which launched last September with a whopping $15 million in funding. Rather than engage in a race to accomplish their respective goals, the two groups believe that they can reach the proverbial finish line faster by pooling their collective brain power.
Professor Andrew Pask, who heads the Melbourne lab, marveled that "a lot of the challenges with our efforts can be overcome by an army of scientists working on the same problems simultaneously, conducting and collaborating on the many experiments to accelerate discoveries." He went on to explain that his group will focus on figuring out how to gestate a marsupial embryo in a lab without a surrogate. Meanwhile, researchers from Colossal Biosciences will work on reproducing thylacine DNA via CRISPR gene editing and genomic engineering. As one might imagine, both groups are optimistic that the collaboration will allow for a significant acceleration in the quest to revive extinct species.
To that end, Pask noted that his original estimate was that the Melbourne lab might "have an edited cell that we could then consider progressing into making into an animal" in around a decade. However, in light of this new partnership, he said that "I now believe that in ten years’ time, we could have our first living baby thylacine." Meanwhile, Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm was even more confident, telling The Guardian that they may achieve success in less than six years and that "it's highly probable this could be the first animal we de-extinct." One presumes that the various lessons learned in reviving the Tasmanian Tiger would then be applied to the woolly mammoth as well as help currently threatened marsupial species.