Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

DESHPANDE: Is Reversing Extinction Feasible?

Last year, I had a stunning realization: I thoroughly envy cavemen.

After watching “Ice Age” with my younger brother and marveling at the prospect of seeing mighty woolly mammoths traverse the land, I became compelled to revisit the magical Pleistocene Epoch. Imagine the robust sampling of species that once populated the ice sheet Siberia; I picture cave lions parading alongside woolly rhinoceros, with the threat of savage saber-toothed tigers lurking in the frosty air. I visualize the wacky 8-foot-tall terror bird — Titanis walleri — sprinting at speeds of 65 mph while slumbering ground sloths look on in amusement from comfy tree perches. What a time to be alive!

This year, my longing to experience the radical diversity of the past exponentially increased when I learned that we can bring back the lumbering woolly mammoth, the flightless dodo, the Irish elk and countless other extinct species through genetic technology.

De-extinction —a field that combines the genius of molecular genetics with evolutionary and conservation biology — has emerged to resurrect and revive species. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard, has proposed extracting fragments of DNA to reconstruct ancient genomes of extinct organisms.

Identifying genes would be spliced into stem cells of the extinct species’ modern relatives, and resulting germ cells would be implanted into the modern relative’s developing embryos. In two generations, the extinct species would breathe again.

The implications of this extraordinary technology are earth-shattering; de-extinction could be our golden ticket to restoring the biodiversity that humans have single-handedly sapped over generations. We could use this method to repopulate every single organism on the endangered species list — ranging from the tiger to the polar bear to the elephant — and erase the devastating damage we have wrought on the natural world through deforestation and habitat pollution. We could even use de-extinction to satisfy our fantasies of seeing stealthy saber-toothed cats grace the Arctic tundra during our lifetime.
But should we bring these prehistoric and extinct species back to life? Absolutely not.

Just because we have the ability to harness the power of biotechnology and manipulate DNA, that does not entitle us to waste resources on dead organisms. Regenerating just one wooly mammoth is estimated to cost a staggering $10 million. De-extinction is an inordinately costly process, and is not currently feasible on a grand scale.

Furthermore, there are 16,928 endangered species across the globe that could face extinction within decades. According to National Geographic, we lose between 100 and 1,000 species every single year. Decelerating this alarming rate of vanishing diversity requires eliminating poaching trades, fostering political will, monitoring species and maintaining natural habitats.

To effectively carry out these tasks, organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy need billions of dollars. Given these costs, we should purposefully invest our money in saving endangered species before we lose them forever, not in reviving long-gone flora and fauna.

De-extinction also presents a slew of ecological concerns. If these extinct species are recreated, questions will arise about which environments to place them in, and how to guarantee they will not negatively impact prevailing ecological relationships. Introducing a population of Tasmanian tigers in its ancestral habitat of Australia could disrupt other organisms’ niches if the tigers prey on a keystone species, and perhaps even lead to the extinction of currently thriving organisms.

Similarly, de-extinction carries a vast amount of population genetic concerns; establishing a successful and self-sustaining species is difficult work thanks to the microevolutionary force of genetic drift. In a finite collection of organisms, certain alleles randomly become over-represented while others become under-represented; this decreases the amount of genetic variation present within the population.

Because de-extinction involves creating genetically identical organisms from a couple eggs, these organisms would also face immense difficulty in maintaining variation due to their homogenous genomes. Thus, the entire population could be exploited and terminated by one strain of bacteria or a particular selective pressure since it would not have adequate variation to survive the heterogeneous environment.

The wow factor of de-extinction embraces my inner child, connects me to the phenomenal scientific world and helps me appreciate the volume of biodiversity that once inhabited and still populates planet Earth. However, when considering de-extinction, it is important that we keep our feet firmly planted in the ground and separate fantasy from reality.

 

NikitaDeshpande_SketchNikita Deshpande is a freshman in the College. The Century Cap appears every other Friday.

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