A team of genetic scientists led by biosciences professor Andrew Pask is attempting to make the concept of “de-extinction” a reality. Over the coming decade, they plan to use gene editing to turn a dunnart cell into a thylacine cell and bring the long-dead creature into today’s world.
The goal invites an obvious reference. Pask doesn’t mind.
“I love Jurassic Park!” he said. “I love it.” He keeps a boxed figurine of John Hammond, the character in the 1993 film who creates the ill-fated park for de-extincted dinosaurs, in his office.
Critics call de-extinction projects expensive follies that distract from the real work of conservation and that could have unintended consequences. But Pask, unlike the fictional Hammond, says he has a conservationist’s ethos. Australia has the fastest rate of mammal extinction in the world, driven primarily by invasive species such as foxes and feral cats, and changing wildfire patterns.
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“It is certainly feasible,” said Owain Edwards, Environmental Synthetic Genomics group leader at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, who is not involved in the project. “Absolutely. What they’re proposing to do, can be done. What isn’t clear to anybody yet is: What exactly will result from it? Because it will never be a pure thylacine.”
