Already trying to restore the mammoth Austin entrepreneur’s startup also

A Texas-based bioscience company that has been working to bring back the woolly mammoth now says it is trying to restore a second extinct animal: the Tasmanian tiger. Colossal, a genetic engineering company, was formed last year with the goal of advancing the field of de-extinction and combating climate change. As part of its work to bring back extinct animals, the company is developing software, wetware and hardware that it plans to use for species preservation, but also plans to monetize. The company is led by Austin-based entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School and has offices in Austin, Dallas and Boston. Colossal made headlines last year when it said it intends to create a woolly mammoth and elephant hybrid that it hopes to having roaming the Arctic tundra within the next decade. Now, Colossal has turned its attention to the thylacine, a slim, striped Australian marsupial commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger that was eradicated by human hunting nearly a century ago. Colossal aims to bring the species back and restore its natural ecosystem by partnering with the University of Melbourne and its Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research Lab, which is headed by Andrew Pask, a leading marsupial evolutionary biologist and Tasmanian tiger expert.”Some people classify us as a mammoth company, but we’re really a de-extinction company, so our goal is to focus on bringing back species that can have a positive impact on various ecosystems, and the Tasmanian tiger is definitely one of those species,” Lamm said. Pask and his team have already been doing work on the core genome of the thylacine, and will now team up with Colossal’s labs and teams to try to bring the animal back. As part of the collaboration, Pask has also joined Colossal’s scientific advisory board. More:Could Austin entrepreneur’s company help bring back the woolly mammoth?’It’s the opportunity to restore an animal’Pask said the animal was a dog-like marsupial, with a pouch like a kangaroo where it carried babies, or joeys, but unlike its other close relative it was the only apex predator marsupial in the region, until it was hunted to death by European settlers in a short period of time. The animal is native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea and had previously roamed the Earth for millions of years before it officially went extinct in 1936, according to scientists.”It’s a tragic story of these incredibly unique, really important species that was not understood, and, brutally hunted to extinction. And now it’s had all these terrible impacts on the ecosystem in Tasmania,” Pask said. “We’ve got the technology to actually correct that wrong to think about trying to bring some of those really important species back and that’s something that we’re incredibly passionate about. It’s the opportunity to restore an animal that was so unique, so amazing and so important.

All data is taken from the source: http://statesman.com
Article Link: https://www.statesman.com/story/business/technology/2022/08/17/can-an-austin-entrepreneurs-startup-bring-back-extinct-tasmanian-tiger/65404571007/

#Tasmaniantiger #newstoday #newsworldnow #newstodayinusa #newstodayupdate #kingworldnews #

More info on Already trying to restore the mammoth Austin entrepreneur’s startup also