De-Extinction

By Rita Dwivedi

De-extinction is the process of creating an organism that greatly resembles a species that has recently gone extinct. While there are efforts to use some technologies – such as cloning, artificial insemination, and breeding processes – that aim to revert domesticated species to phenotypes that closely resemble their older ancestors, many birds’ reproductive systems are not easily amenable to these kinds of techniques. As a result, scientists have turned towards genome editing technology, such as CRISPR, as a promising technique. Genome editing technology creates hybrids between living and extinct organisms by inserting edited DNA of an extinct species into the nucleus of a reproducing cell. This technique blends the traits that made the species unique with genes from the donor species, causing the outcome to be not an identical copy of the extinct species but rather a hybrid of it (1). However, even with this technique, there are various downfalls. For example, Professor Tom Gilbert at the University of Copenhagen has experimented with a species called the Christmas Island rat that went extinct during 1898 and 1908. Gilbert and his team restructured the Christmas Island rat genome and compared it to the genome of a living member of the same species. Their analysis shows that even when a high-quality genome is used as reference, around five percent of the genome sequence remains unrecoverable. Genetic engineering within itself is highly restricted by its reliance on an in-depth understanding of the extinct organism’s genome. There is also concern with being able to obtain samples of extinct species, something that becomes much more difficult the longer that a species has been extinct (2).

Regardless of these difficulties, the prospect of even bringing back extinct species is a matter of intense debate. The main argument supporting de-extinction is the fact that many feel like humans have a responsibility to alleviate the damage done to ecosystems. De-extinction would be a way to correct the wrongs of humankind’s previous actions. As a result of humankind’s actions, such as overhunting, many species have been pushed into extinction, causing massive ecological imbalances in the environment. De-extinction can be a way to remedy this issue by conserving ecosystems and preserving balances. However, it is important to consider the fact that extinct species have never been reintroduced into new ecosystems before; the results will be unpredictable and complex, with many of them being negative. Those who are opponents of de-extinction argue that the risks will outweigh the potential benefits. Furthermore, one of the largest arguments against de-extinction is that many feel that focusing on de-extinction can compromise biodiversity by taking away new resources from already existing ecosystems and species (3). Reviving an extinct species and asking the government to pay for its conservation would require deprioritizing a large number of still-living species when much of this money could go towards helping species that are on the verge of extinction (4).

Sources:

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/de-extinction-can-we-bring-extinct-animals-back-from-the-dead/