De-extinction Terms
This is the term for the use of biotechnology to resurrect extinct species or create genetically similar proxies.
What is de-extinction?
This prehistoric wolf, extinct for roughly 10,000 years, was a major case study in your presentation.
What is the dire wolf?
This ecological term describes a species whose removal causes disproportionate damage to its entire ecosystem — the main justification for bringing back extinct animals.
What is a keystone species?
Instead of iron-based hemoglobin, octopus blood contains a copper-based protein called hemocyanin — making their blood this color.
What is blue?
This gene-editing tool uses a guide RNA and a cutting protein to precisely insert extinct traits into a living animal's genome.
What is CRISPR-Cas9?
The Tauros Program aimed to bring back this extinct wild ancestor of modern cattle, which disappeared in 1627.
What is the aurochs?
Reintroducing a de-extincted animal into a modern ecosystem risks this problem, where the revived animal competes with species that evolved in its absence.
What is ecological destabilization?
This is the only organ in the human body that can completely regenerate itself — you can remove up to 75% of it and it will grow back.
What is the liver?
This type of ancient genetic material, extracted from frozen or preserved remains, serves as the blueprint for de-extinction editing.
What is ancient DNA?
The dire wolf project used this animal as its closest living relative to provide the base genome for editing.
What is the African jackal?
This is the main reason habitat restoration must accompany de-extinction — without it, revived animals have nowhere safe to actually live.
What is habitat loss?
The most recent large animal to go extinct before humans — died out only about 1,000 years ago, not millions.
What is the elephant bird (or moa)?
Rather than true cloning, most de-extinction projects produce this — a hybrid animal that fills the ecological role of the extinct species but isn't genetically identical to it.
What is a functional proxy?
Back-breeding works by selecting individuals from a living population that display traits closest to an extinct ancestor — essentially an accelerated version of this natural process.
What is artificial selection?
Critics argue de-extinction funding would be better spent preventing this — since billions directed at extinct species could be used for another purpose.
What is current species from going extinct?
Identical twins can have different phenotypes despite sharing the same DNA, because of changes in gene expression caused by environment and lifestyle — this field of biology studies those changes.
What is epigenetics?
This process, used to map heavily degraded ancient DNA onto a high-quality reference genome of a living relative, is a critical early step in de-extinction.
What is genomic scaffolding?
This marsupial, also called the Tasmanian tiger, is one of the most active current de-extinction targets and went extinct as recently as 1936.
What is the thylacine?
Even with a perfect genome, a de-extincted animal would lack this — the cultural knowledge passed down through generations, like migration routes and hunting behaviors, that can't be encoded in DNA.
What is learned behavior?
A tardigrade can survive the vacuum of space, radiation, and temperatures near absolute zero by entering this state where it expels nearly all body water and halts its metabolism.
What is cryptobiosis (or tun state)?