For the first time, researchers have successfully extracted and decoded RNA from an extinct animal.
The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was a wolflike marsupial that went extinct after the last one died in a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania in 1936. Now a roughly 130-year-old museum specimen has yielded bits of RNA, the fragile molecules responsible for turning DNA’s genetic instructions into cellular functions, researchers report in the August Genome Research. The results shed new light on thylacine biology and may inform efforts to bring the marsupial back from extinction.
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