Today in Technology History
(Published weekdays. To receive "Today in Technology History" by e-mail, click here. To read past issues, click here.)
June 4
On June 4, 1984, a team of scientists reported that they were the first to successfully clone genetic material from an extinct animal.
The California researchers cloned DNA from a quagga (pronounced KWAHG-ah) -- an animal that looked like a cross between a zebra and a horse. Quaggas, native to southern Africa, were hunted to extinction; the last quagga died 1883 in a Dutch zoo.
Cloning the genetic material was not hard -- the real challenge was finding a sample of quagga tissue with any intact DNA. The scientists obtained a piece of quagga muscle preserved for 140 years in a German museum. They were able to extract only fragments of the animal's DNA, so the thousands of "clones" were merely copies of those fragments.
The scientists never had any realistic expectation of resurrecting the quagga, but their research surprisingly led in that direction. An analysis of the DNA unexpectedly showed that the quagga was just a subspecies of the common zebra -- suggesting that the quagga genes might survive in today's zebras. A program to revive the quagga by breeding those recessive genes into the forefront has shown some success.
Since then, DNA has been extracted from many types of preserved remains, including those of other extinct species and several mummies. In recent years, there have been attempts to clone the Siberian mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and the huia bird (all extinct). And of course revitalizing dinosaurs through cloning is central to the popular "Jurassic Park" books and movies.
Related links:
Click here and here to learn more about the quagga breeding program.
Use these links to read about recent efforts to clone other extinct animals:
Tasmanian tiger, or the
| Biotechnology | Convergence | Creativity | Culture | E-conomics | Education |
| Equity | Gov't & Politics | Innovation | National Security | Personal Security |
BE SURE TO VISIT THE NEW ATLANTIS: A JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY.
For errors, broken links, questions or comments,
contact webmaster@tecsoc.org.
