Pigeon

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Synopsis: 4.4. animals: Birds: Pigeon:

A century ago, vast flocks of passenger pigeons covered the North american skies. Hundreds of millions, even billions, stretched across the horizon in every direction.

the last known passenger pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo. But if Church has his way, this majestic sight could one day return to our skies.

he and other scientists are dreaming up ambitious plans to resurrect long-dead animals from pigeons to Tasmanian tigers and wooly mammoths.

 The same technologies could also prevent endangered species from going the way of the dodo oe or the passenger pigeon.

though he does not underestimate the effort required to bring the passenger pigeon back to the skies.

Armed with this code, they then need to find a way of engineering a regular pigeon's stem cells into behaving like a passenger pigeon's stem cells by mutating the genome.

Church says the complete genome of the passenger pigeon from museum specimens will soon be published and researchers are beginning to alter the genetic make-up of a more familiar bird oe the chicken oe to practice their techniques."

"What you can do for chicken you should be able to do for pigeon, and that can include creating DNA that you haven't seen alive for a 100 years,

But even if Church has the passenger pigeon's full genetic code, which he expects to recreate within a decade,

However, he admits that creating a passenger pigeon from the stem cells of an ordinary pigeon would involve a massive scale up of the same technologies.

"If there's enough people enthusiastic about bringing an extinct species like a mammoth or passenger pigeon,

So how long will it be before we see a revived version of the passenger pigeon (extinct in 1914), the Tasmanian tiger (extinct in 1936),

If the technique proves successful (such as with the passenger pigeon), it might be applied to the many other extinct species that have left their#oeancient DNA#in museum specimens

The passenger pigeon the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities.

Reviving the passenger pigeon The passenger pigeon filled the skies of North america in flocks of millions during the 19th century.

The world's last passenger pigeon Martha died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio.

Working with Harvard biologist George Church they figured out a possible way to revive passenger pigeons.

You can't simply clone a passenger pigeon museum specimen because they no longer have fully intact genomes.

Using fragments of the passenger pigeon DNA scientists could synthesize the genes for certain traits and splice the genes together into the genome of a rock pigeon.

The cells containing the passenger pigeon DNA could be transformed into cells that produce eggs and sperm

which could be injected into rock pigeon eggs. The pigeons that hatched would be rock pigeons but their offspring would resemble passenger pigeons.

Scientists could then breed these birds and select for specific traits as a dog breeder might.

Eventually the resulting offspring would appear very much like the passenger pigeon. But that's not the only extinct animal scientists have their sights on reviving.

Woolly mammoths next? Other scientists dream of bringing back a beast that roamed the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago:

Even if researchers succeed in creating a mammoth passenger pigeon or other extinct creature it has to survive in the wild.

For example the passenger pigeon was a very social bird known to form flocks of millions. When their numbers dwindled to a few thousand the birds stopped breeding Ehrenfeld told Livescience.

What's more the pigeons that raised them would be a different species with differing mothering techniques.

Resurrecting a creature like the passenger pigeon or woolly mammoth has a strong appeal to the public's imagination Temple said.

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