Dear Doves,

        In what can only be called a bizarre plan to bring back
an extinct frog, scientists plan to implant a cell nucleus with
DNA from a frog which has been extinct for 30 years. I'm worried
that we could inadvertently produce a new frog with enhanced prospects for survival. We could be
engineering a species that can't be controlled. Florida
 
Doves know first hand what can happen when huge toxic toads invade a region when there are no natural predators to check explosive growth possible when amphibians reproduce. We are abusing our technology, which might bring onharmful unintended consequences.
                                                             Agape,
                                                                       Mike C.

Scientists revive the genome of an extinct Australian frog

ByKounteya Sinha, TNN | Mar 18, 2013, 03.22 AM IST

LONDON: A frog extinct for the last 30 years may be brought back to life.

In a scientific breakthrough that has opened frontiers to saving species in catastrophic decline from becoming extinct the genome of an extinct Australian frog has been revived and reactivated by a team of scientists using sophisticated cloning technology to implant a "dead" cell nucleus into an egg from another frog species.

The bizarre gastric-brooding frog Rheobatrachus silus - which swallowed its eggs, brooding its young in its stomach and gave birth through its mouth -- became extinct in 1983.

The 'Lazarus Project' team has been able to recover cell nuclei from tissues collected in the 1970s and kept for 40 years in a conventional deep freezer.

The 'de-extinction' project aims to bring the frog back to life.

"We are watching Lazarus rise from the dead, step by exciting step," says the leader of the Lazarus Project team, professor Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"We've reactivated dead cells to live and revived the extinct frog's genome in the process. Now we have fresh cryo-preserved cells of the frog to use in future cloning experiments. We're increasingly confident that hurdles ahead are technological not biological and that we will succeed. We've demonstrated the great promise this technology has as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world's amphibian species are in catastrophic decline," he said.

Researchers from around the world have gathered to discuss progress and plans to "de-extinct" other animals and plants with possible candidate species being the woolly mammoth, dodo, Cuban red macaw and New Zealand's giant moa.

These frogs belonged to the genus of ground-dwelling frogs from Queensland in Australia and consisted of two species both of which became extinct in the mid-1980s. The genus was unique because it contained the only two known frog species that incubated the prejuvenile stages of their offspring in the stomach of the mother.

In repeated experiments over five years, the researchers used a laboratory technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. They took fresh donor eggs from the distantly related Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus, inactivated the egg nuclei and replaced them with dead nuclei from the extinct frog.

Some of the eggs spontaneously began to divide and grow into early embryo stage -- a tiny ball of many living cells.

Although none of the embryos survived, genetic tests confirmed that the dividing cells contain the genetic material from the extinct frog.

The frozen specimens were preserved and provided by professor Mike Tyler of the University of Adelaide, who extensively studied both species of gastric-brooding frog -- R. silus and R. vitellinus -- before they vanished in the wild in 1979 and 1985 respectively.