Advances in genetic engineering have some biologists convinced theyll re-create extinct species.

Home to roost: The last living passenger pigeon, Martha, can be found, stuffed, in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Passenger pigeons once darkened the skies over the eastern United States. Huge flocks would roost on chestnut trees, their weight snapping off branches. By 1914, though, humans had hunted the bird to extinction.

Now, a project to reanimate the pigeon using genetic engineering is drawing new attention to the question of de-extinction, or whether biotechnology can help conserve rare animals and even restore others that dissapeared eons ago.

The passenger pigeon effort, known as Revive and Restore, is being paid for by the Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit led by entrepreneur and author Stewart Brand (see Environmental Heresies), who has been stirring interest in the idea of de-extinction by organizing meeting of key researchers, including one last week at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.

Some scientists are convinced the technology is feasible. Not only is sequencing of extinct genomes a reality, but revival of extinct species is within reach, said Hendrik Poinar, a researcher at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

The idea of reviving extinct species first gained attention a decade ago, after Dolly the sheep was born via cloning. Since then, advances in DNA sequencing have made it theoretically possible to bring back even ancient species, like the woolly mammoth. Already, researchers have re-created some micorganisms, like the 1918 flu virus, from genetic material found in corpses from the period. Some leading scientists are also creating astartup company that intends to help implement de-extinction (see A Stealthy De-Extinction Startup.)

Its going to be iterative and a convergence of technologies, said Ryan Phelan, a biotech entrepreneur who is married to Brand. I think de-extinction is an empowering face for applying genomics in new domains.

Globally, there appear to be about half a dozen projects aimed at re-creating extinct animals. Those most likely to succeed in the near term involve cases where researchers have access to cells preserved in liquid nitrogen.

In Australia, for instance, researcher Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales says he is now trying to clone the gastric breeding frog, an species known for gestating its young in its stomach and giving birth through its mouth. Archer says hes using cells frozen by a colleague in the 1970s, shortly before the last of the animals disappeared.

Read the rest here:
An Unlikely Plan to Revive the Passenger Pigeon

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