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As a science, it’s awesome,” Gilbert says. But “is this the best use of the money in a world where we can’t keep our rhinos alive?” Lamoreux, J.; Woinarski, J.; Burbidge, A.A. (2016). " Rattus macleari". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016: e.T19344A22440729. doi: 10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-1.RLTS.T19344A22440729.en . Retrieved 12 November 2021. For that reason, the Christmas Island rat ( Rattus macleari) was an obvious choice for analysis for the scientists. It diverged from a close relative, the Norway brown rat ( Rattus norvegicus), only around 2.6 million years ago. a b Harper, Francis (1945). Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World. New York: American Committee for International Wild Life Protection. pp.206–208. Even if gene-editing were perfected, replica animals created with the technique would thus have certain critical deficiencies.The team found that the Christmas Island rat genome mapped to about 95 percent of the Norway brown rat genome. Further analyses showed that the roughly 5 percent that was missing could not be explained solely by a flaw in the technique or an inadequate reference genome. Rather, because of evolutionary divergence between the two species, most of that genetic information was simply lost. By doing these kinds of analyses, which is not hard to do, you can at least come up with the what will you get, what will you not get, and you can use that to decide is it worth doing,” Gilbert says. Wyatt KB, Campos PF, Gilbert MT, Kolokotronis SO, Hynes WH, etal. (2008). "Historical mammal extinction on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) correlates with introduced infectious disease". PLOS ONE. 3 (11): e3602. Bibcode: 2008PLoSO...3.3602W. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003602. PMC 2572834. PMID 18985148. SAMN05425704 (NZ2), SAMN05425705 (SG1) SAMN05425706 (SG2), SAMN05425709 (NZ1), SAMN05425641 (WH1), SAMN05425642 (WH2), and SAMN05425643 (WH3). Flannery, Tim & Schouten, Peter (2001). A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-87113-797-5.
With the advent of gene-editing technology such as CRISPR, scientists have shifted from cloning to genetic engineering as the most promising method for “de-extinction,” or the resurrection of species that have died out ( SN: 10/7/20). But unlike cloning, genetic engineering wouldn’t create an exact replica of an extinct species. Instead, the technique would edit an existing animal’s genome so that it resembles that of the desired extinct animal. The challenge is making that proxy as similar to the extinct species as possible. Instead of focusing on iconic species like the woolly mammoth or the Tasmanian tiger, a team of paleogeneticists have studied how, using gene editing, they could resurrect the humble Christmas Island rat, which died out around 120 years ago. His interest in Christmas Island rats was piqued when a colleague studied their skins to look for evidence of pathogens that caused their extinction around 1900. This has important implications for de-extinction efforts, such as a project by US bioscience firm Colossal to resurrect the mammoth, which died out around 4,000 years ago. Teams in Australia meanwhile are looking at reviving the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, whose last surviving member died in captivity in 1936.The rat is named after Captain John Maclear (1838–1907) of the British survey-ship HMS Flying-Fish, who collected the specimen from Christmas Island in 1886. It was described as a new species by Oldfield Thomas the next year, although it was originally described under the genus Mus. [2] [7] Maclear was earlier commander on HMS Challenger for the Challenger Expedition of 1872–1876 under its commission captain, Sir George Nares.
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