Researchers said on Tuesday they have recovered RNA from the desiccated skin and muscle of a Tasmanian tiger stored since 1891 at a museum in Stockholm.
The Tasmanian tiger, a dog-sized striped carnivorous marsupial also called the thylacine, once roamed the Australian continent and adjacent islands, an apex predator that hunted kangaroos and other prey. Because of humans, the species is now extinct.
While not the focus of this research, the ability to extract, sequence and analyze old RNA could boost efforts by other scientists toward recreating extinct species. Recovering RNA from old viruses also could help decipher the cause of past pandemics.DNA is a double-stranded molecule that contains an organism's genetic code, carrying the genes that give rise to all living things.
There were questions about how long RNA could survive in the type of conditions - room temperature in a cupboard - that these remains had been stored. The remains at the Swedish Natural History Museum were in a state of semi-mummification, with skin, muscles and bones preserved but internal organs lost.
The Tasmanian tiger resembled a wolf, aside from the tiger-like stripes on its back. The arrival of people in Australia roughly 50,000 years ago ushered in massive population losses. The 18th century arrival of European colonizers spelled doom for the remaining populations concentrated on the island of Tasmania, with a bounty later put on them after they were declared a hazard to livestock. The last-known Tasmanian tiger succumbed in a Tasmanian zoo in 1936.