Fwd: [DIYbio] [SALT] De-extinction begins (Stewart Brand talk)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stewart Brand <sb@longnow.org>
Date: Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:49 AM
Subject: [DIYbio] [SALT] De-extinction begins (Stewart Brand talk)
To: SALT list <salt@list.longnow.org>


The new tools of synthetic biology, I began, are about to liberate
conservation in a spectacular way. It is becoming possible to bring
some extinct species back to life.

A project within Long Now called "Revive & Restore" is pushing to make
de-extinction a reality, starting with the fabled passenger pigeon and
moving on to the woolly mammoth. The project's director, Ryan Phelan,
organized a series of three conferences bringing together molecular
biologists and conservation biologists to see if "resurrection
biology" is becoming a field and how it might proceed responsibly.
(The most viewable of the conferences was "TEDxDeExtinction" in
Washington DC this March.)

At those conferences we heard about cloning efforts that are already
partially successful. Alberto Fernández Arias in Spain temporarily
brought back an extinct ibex called the bucardo. Michael Archer, from
Australia, reported reviving an early stage embryo of the extinct
gastric brooding frog. Using traditional back-breeding, Henri
Kerkdijk-Otten, is rebuilding the European aurochs (extinct in 1627)
from a variety its descendent modern cattle. William Powell is
showing how the nearly extinct beloved American chestnut tree is being
brought back by a combination of back-breeding and sophisticated
genetic engineering.

Robert Lanza (Advanced Cell Technology), Oliver Ryder (The Frozen
Zoo), and Michael McGrew (Roslin Institute) showed miracles that can
now be accomplished with advanced cloning and induced pluripotent stem
cells. Beth Shapiro (UC Santa Cruz) and Hendrik Poinar (McMaster
University) explained how complete genomes are being read from the
"ancient DNA" of fossils and museum specimens. George Church
(Harvard) spelled out his allele replacement technique that will allow
editing the genes from an extinct species into the genome of its
closest living relative---from the passenger pigeon into the
band-tailed pigeon, for example---thereby bringing back to life the
extinct animal.

Ben Novak is working full-time for Revive & Restore on the passenger
pigeon and is now in the thick of sequencing work and comparative
genomics in Beth Shapiro's ancient-DNA lab at UC Santa Cruz.

Conservation biologists like Stanley Temple, Kent Redford, and Frans
Vera regard de-extinction as "a game-changer for conservation." On
the one hand, it dilutes the stark message "Extinction is forever!"
while on the other hand it offers a message of hope that conservation
can build on.

I concluded, "The fact is, humans have made a huge hole in nature over
the last 10,000 years. But now we have the ability to repair some of
the damage. We'll do most of the repair by expanding and protecting
wild areas and by expanding and protecting the populations of
endangered species.

"Some species that we killed off totally, we might consider bringing
back to a world that misses them."

--Stewart Brand - sb@longnow.org


PS... Revive & Restore is hiring a Project Coordinator. Details
here. It's going to be a dream job for somebody.


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-Nathan

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