First Extinct Animal Cloned - Pyrenean Ibex Died Minutes After Birth - Nat. Geographic

[hatrack]

An extinct animal has been resurrected by cloning for the first time—though the clone died minutes after birth. Findings revealed January 23 in the journal Theriogenology describe the use of frozen skin in 2003 to clone a bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex, a subspecies of Spanish ibex that went extinct in 2000.

Scientists had cloned endangered species before, but not one that had officially died out.

(Related: "Scientists Clone First Endangered Species: A Wild Sheep" .)

Study co-author Jose Folch, of the Center for Agro-Nutrition Research and Technology in Aragon, Spain, said his team plans to try cloning another this ibex this year or next. "We are not especially disappointed for the death of the cloned newborn," Folch explained in an email, because such deaths in cloning experiments are common.

"We will try to improve the technology in order to increase the efficiency of the cloning process."

EDIT

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090210-bucardo-clone.html?source=rss

[ZombieHorde]

1. Awesome! K&R

[lynnertic]

2. Creepy. This will cause a lot of suffering in the name of science

and cloning furthers the cause of eugenics.

"such deaths in cloning experiments are common"

Oh, that poor little baby that shouldn't have been born....

[ogneopasno]

3. Awesome and creepy! at the same time!

[Pisces]

4. Can anyone say "Jurassic Park"

[htuttle]

5. I don't think you could end up with a viable species from cloning

The gene pool wouldn't be nearly big enough unless you did a LOT of fiddling to artificially increase diversity.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. That would depend on how many original samples you had, wouldn't it?

There must be hundreds of stuffed dodos and passenger pigeons in natural science museums around the world. How many different samples would you need to re-establish the species?

[TheWraith]

7. You're looking at the 50/500 rule.

In other words, minimum 50 individuals to prevent unacceptable inbreeding. 500 individuals for long-term genetic diversity.

[XemaSab]

8. There are hundreds of Passenger Pigeons and Carolina Parakeets

There are no stuffed Dodoes, but there are some skeletal remains and a dried-out egg.

[HamdenRice]

12. Not necessarily. Look at the cheetah. Recent genetic studies suggest ...

that several thousand years ago, the cheetah almost went extinct. Some biologists have concluded that all living cheetah are descendants of one "last" litter. Yet the bounced back. They have serious problems with genetic diversity, and are considered almost clones, but they have hung on, and now there are thousands of them.

[Kablooie]

9. Dodos! More Dodos please!

[depakid]

10. Still waiying for one of these

From extinction to gene expression ... a mouse foetus expressing the thylacine gene, shown by the blue staining.
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A genetic fragment of Australia's extinct Tasmanian tiger has been brought back to life by Melbourne researchers. Dr Andrew Pask and Professor Marilyn Renfree from the University of Melbourne have inserted part of a gene involved in bone growth from the fabled animal into mice, and confirmed that it functioned.

"We've brought a fraction of this extinct genome back to life," Pask, at the Department of Zoology, says. "No one has done this in a living organism before." The Tasmanian tiger or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was a large, meat-eating native Australian marsupial that was hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 1900s.

The last-known animal died in captivity in the Hobart Zoo in 1936.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/20/2249769.htm

[Dogmudgeon]

11. All you need is some funny, poorly-spelled gag text ...

... and you'll have a LOLFetus.

--d!
ZOMG! I eated a SHARPIE!!!1!