Back to life
It seems like the plot of a sci-fi novel but de-extinction - the science of bringing an animal species back from the dead - could be the next step in wildlife conservation.
WORDS: JOHN C SILCOX
ILLUSTRATION: MIKE MCQUAIDE
End of the world predictions did not come true for humanity at the dawn of our new millennium, but sadly the Pyrenean ibex was not so lucky.
On 6 January 2000 a healthy female named Celia was springing through a pine forest in northern Spain when it was struck by a falling tree and killed. Being the last of her kind, such an unfortunate incident also called time on the survival of this species of goat. As Celia breathed her last, the bucardo – as the ibex is also known – became extinct.
Normally this would be the end of the story and, like the infamous dodo, the bucardo would have been forever more referred to in the past tense. However, 10 months before Celia’s demise, a team of European researchers headed by Dr Jose Folch had hatched a plan to try to future-proof the continuation of the species. They had visited the goat to collect tissue samples from her and frozen them with the hope of using the material to create genetic clones when she died.
“The bucardo, so briefly back in the world, went extinct all over again”
Sure enough, in July 2003, Folch and his team managed to deliver Celia’s clone via a surrogate mother and the bucardo was back. But before the scientists could celebrate, the tiny, toffee-coloured kid died – a mere seven minutes after being born. An autopsy later revealed that its lungs were grossly deformed and it had never stood a chance.
‘The bucardo, so briefly back in the world, went extinct all over again,’ says Helen Pilcher, the comedian, author and science journalist. ‘It has the honour of not just being the first animal to be brought back from extinction, but also the ignominy of being the first animal ever to go extinct twice. This is a bittersweet story but one that marks the beginning of exciting times.’
In her new book, Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-extinction, Pilcher investigates this growing field of research and investigates a range of ventures, from attempts to resurrect the Tyrannosaurus Rex to reviving Elvis Presley.
Today there are several projects around the globe, all trying to de-extinct different animals. In Australia scientists are working on the ‘Lazarus’ frog, in the USA they are working on the passenger pigeon, while in the UK the great auk penguin is under focus. In South Africa the quagga bird is the subject of study and in Europe scientists are trying to revive big-horned aurochs, the forefather of modern cattle.
Most of these projects are using similar techniques to those that led to the cloning of Dolly the sheep, and more recently the bucardo, and the chances of success are improving all the time.
There are also a number of separate teams in Korea, Japan and the USA trying to de-extinct the most iconic of beasts: the woolly mammoth. According to American scientist George Church, it could be as little as two years before they manage to produce a hybrid elephant mammoth embryo. However, since its closest living relative the Asian elephant is endangered, it is unlikely that experiments will be able to use one as a surrogate mother and the possibility of growing an embryo in an artificial womb is still a long way off.
So if science has now advanced to a point where de-extinction is now a real possibility, what are the limits? Could we ever see the fiction of Jurassic Park become a reality? The quick answer is no. Unfortunately for dinosaur fans, the key to the de-extinction process is DNA, and we haven’t yet found a way of retrieving this from fossilised material.
As disappointing as that is, the work by scientists trying to retrieve it has enabled the discovery of other interesting things such as dinosaur collagen – the main structural protein found in skin and other connective tissues. This knowledge is helping to increase our understanding of these ancient creatures.
Although T-Rex is off the list, it seems possible, in theory at least, to bring back any species for which we have a complete DNA blueprint, known as a genome. That would include another species of human: the Neanderthal. And in 2010 a team led by Dr Svante Pääbo published a draft of the Neanderthal genome and have been adding to it ever since.
‘It’s one thing to reconstruct a genome inside a computer but quite another to bring something to life,’ adds Pilcher. ‘Nevertheless, while researching my book quite a few experts said they believed making an early man would be technically possible, although the ethics and benefits of such an experiment are debatable.’
Indeed, just because it’s possible to de-extinct ancient man is there any point in doing it? Especially as sequencing the Neanderthal genome has shown that its DNA still live on inside many modern human beings. For Pilcher, de-extinction experiments shouldn’t simply be vanity projects but rather carefully chosen to benefit our current world. She introduces the idea of genetic rescue, where lessons from de-extinction projects are applied to help save endangered species.
“We are currently going through the sixth period of mass extinction and more species are disappearing from Earth now than since the death of the dinosaurs.”
There are many animals alive today that have passed a critical threshold for their survival and are fated to become extinct if nothing is done about it. The great northern white rhino is one of these species and without our help it will be relegated to the history books within our lifetime. Genetic rescue could help create populations of genetically vibrant animals to be released into the wild, where they will have a positive impact on the environment and become an active part of the ecosystem.
‘Scientists estimate that 150 to 200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every day,’ continues Pilcher. ‘We are currently going through the sixth period of mass extinction and more species are disappearing from Earth now than since the death of the dinosaurs. Seeing how dependent man’s survival is on our overall environment, if we do not seriously start to look at ways of solving things, we are doomed to suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs.