I do want to test this question we're all interested in: Does extinction have to be forever?
Želim da testiram ovo pitanje koje nas sve zanima: da li istrebljenje mora da bude večno?
I'm focused on two projects I want to tell you about. One is the Thylacine Project. The other one is the Lazarus Project, and that's focused on the gastric-brooding frog. And it would be a fair question to ask, why have we focused on these two animals? Well, point number one, each of them represents a unique family of its own. We've lost a whole family. That's a big chunk of the global genome gone. I'd like it back. The second reason is that we killed these things. In the case of the thylacine, regrettably, we shot every one that we saw. We slaughtered them. In the case of the gastric-brooding frog, we may have "fungicided" it to death. There's a dreadful fungus that's moving through the world that's called the chytrid fungus, and it's nailing frogs all over the world. We think that's probably what got this frog, and humans are spreading this fungus.
Fokusiran sam na dva projekta o kojima bih želeo da vam pričam. Jedan je projekat Torbarski vuk. Drugi je projekat Lazar i on je fokusiran na žabu Rheobatrachus silus. I bilo bi dobro pitanje zašto smo se fokusirali na ove dve životinje? Prva stvar, svaka od njih predstavlja jedinstvenu porodicu. Izgubili smo celu porodicu. To je veliki deo globalnog genoma koji je nestao. Voleo bih da ga vratimo. Drugi razlog je taj da smo mi ubili ove životinje. U slučaju torbarskog vuka, nažalost, ubili smo svakog kog smo videli. Napravili smo pokolj. U slučaju žabe Rheobatrachus silus možda smo je "pesticidirali" na smrt. Postoji užasna gljiva koja se kreće svetom, koja se zove hitrid gljiva i napada žabe širom sveta. Mislimo da je to ono što je istrebilo ovu žabu i ljudi šire ovu gljivu.
And this introduces a very important ethical point, and I think you will have heard this many times when this topic comes up. What I think is important is that, if it's clear that we exterminated these species, then I think we not only have a moral obligation to see what we can do about it, but I think we've got a moral imperative to try to do something, if we can.
I to uvodi vrlo važno etičko pitanje i mislim da ćete čuti ovo mnogo puta kada se bude govorilo o ovoj temi. Mislim da je važno da ako je jasno da smo istrebili ove vrste, onda mislim da imamo ne samo moralnu obavezu da vidimo šta možemo da učinimo povodom toga, nego mislim da je i moralni imperativ da uradimo nešto ako možemo.
OK. Let me talk to you about the Lazarus Project. It's a frog. And you think, frog. Yeah, but this was not just any frog. Unlike a normal frog, which lays its eggs in the water and goes away and wishes its froglets well, this frog swallowed its fertilized eggs, swallowed them into the stomach, where it should be having food, didn't digest the eggs, and turned its stomach into a uterus. In the stomach, the eggs went on to develop into tadpoles, and in the stomach, the tadpoles went on to develop into frogs, and they grew in the stomach until eventually the poor old frog was at risk of bursting apart. It has a little cough and a hiccup, and out comes sprays of little frogs.
Ok. Da vam kažem nešto o projektu Lazar. To je žaba. I pomislili ste, žaba. Da, ali to nije bila bilo koja žaba. Za razliku od normalne žabe, koja polaže jaja u vodu, odlazi i poželi dobro svojim žabicama, ova žaba je gutala svoja oplođena jaja, gutala u stomak gde bi trebalo da ide hrana, nije varila jaja i pretvarala je svoj stomak u matericu. U stomaku jaja su se razvijala u punoglavce i punoglavci su se razvijali u žabe i rasli su u stomaku dok konačno jadna žaba ne bi dospela u rizik da eksplodira. Malo kašlje i štuca i izađu napolje mlazevi malih žaba.
Now, when biologists saw this, they were agog. They thought, this is incredible. No animal, let alone a frog, has been known to do this, to change one organ in the body into another. And you can imagine the medical world went nuts over this as well. If we could understand how that frog is managing the way its tummy works, is there information here that we need to understand or could usefully use to help ourselves? Now, I'm not suggesting we want to raise our babies in our stomach, but I am suggesting it's possible we might want to manage gastric secretion in the gut. And just as everybody got excited about it, bang! It was extinct.
Kad su biolozi videli ovo bili su jako uzbuđeni. Mislili su: ovo je neverovatno. Ni za jednu životinju, a kamoli za žabu, nije se znalo da radi ovo, da pretvori jedan organ u telu u drugi. Možete da pretpostavite da je i medicinski svet takođe poludeo zbog ovoga. Kad bismo mogli da shvatimo kako ta žaba postiže da joj stomak tako radi, da li ovde postoji informacija koju treba da shvatimo ili bismo mogli korisno da upotrebimo da pomognemo sebi? Ne kažem da želimo da gajimo bebe u svojim stomacima, ali kažem da bismo možda želeli da kontrolišemo želudačnu sekreciju u crevima. I tek što su se svi zagrejali za to, bum! Istrebljena je.
I called up my friend, Professor Mike Tyler in the University of Adelaide. He was the last person who had this frog, a colony of these things, in his lab. And I said, "Mike, by any chance --" This was 30 or 40 years ago. "By any chance had you kept any frozen tissue of this frog?" And he thought about it, and he went to his deep freezer, minus 20 degrees centigrade, and he poured through everything in the freezer, and there in the bottom was a jar and it contained tissues of these frogs.
Nazvao sam svog prijatelja, profesora Majka Tajlera na univerzitetu u Adelajdu. On je bio poslednja osoba koja je imala ovu žabu, koloniju ovih žaba u svojoj laboratoriji. I rekao sam: "Majk, da slučajno..." ovo je bilo pre 30 ili 40 godina - "da slučajno nisi sačuvao neko zamrznuto tkivo ove žabe?" I on je razmišljao o tome i otišao do svog zamrzivača, na minus 20 stepeni Celzijusa i pretražio je sve u zamrzivaču i na dnu je bila tegla u kojoj su bila tkiva ovih žaba.
This was very exciting, but there was no reason why we should expect that this would work, because this tissue had not had any antifreeze put in it, cryoprotectants, to look after it when it was frozen. And normally, when water freezes, as you know, it expands, and the same thing happens in a cell. If you freeze tissues, the water expands, damages or bursts the cell walls. Well, we looked at the tissue under the microscope. It actually didn't look bad. The cell walls looked intact. So we thought, let's give it a go.
Ovo je bilo vrlo uzbudljivo, ali nije bilo razloga da očekujemo da ovo funkcioniše jer u ovo tkivo nije bilo stavljeno nimalo antifriza, krioprotektora, da ga čuva dok je zamrznuto. Obično, kao što znate, kad se voda smrzne ona se širi i ista stvar se dešava u ćeliji. Ako zamrznete tkiva voda se širi i oštećuje ili probija ćelijske zidove. Pogledali smo ova tkiva pod mikroskopom. I zapravo nisu izgledala tako loše. Ćelijski zidovi su izgledali netaknuti. Pa smo pomislili: hajde da probamo.
What we did is something called somatic cell nuclear transplantation. We took the eggs of a related species, a living frog, and we inactivated the nucleus of the egg. We used ultraviolet radiation to do that. And then we took the dead nucleus from the dead tissue of the extinct frog and we inserted those nuclei into that egg. Now, by rights, this is kind of like a cloning project, like what produced Dolly, but it's actually very different, because Dolly was live sheep into live sheep cells. That was a miracle, but it was workable. What we're trying to do is take a dead nucleus from an extinct species and put it into a completely different species and expect that to work. Well, we had no real reason to expect it would, and we tried hundreds and hundreds of these. And just last February, the last time we did these trials,
Uradili smo nešto što se zove transplantacija jedra somatske ćelije. Uzeli smo jaja srodne vrste, žive žabe i deaktivirali jedro jaja. Koristili smo ultraljubičasto zračenje za to. I onda smo uzeli mrtvo jedro iz mrtvog tkiva istrebljene žabe i ubacili ova jedra u to jaje. Ovo izgleda kao neki projekat kloniranja, kao onaj kojim je proizvedena Doli, ali u stvari je vrlo različit jer je Doli bila živa ovca u živim ćelijama ovce. To je bilo čudo, ali je bilo izvodljivo. Ono što mi pokušavamo da uradimo je da uzmemo mrtvo jedro iz istrebljene vrste i stavimo ga u potpuno drugu vrstu i očekujemo da to funkcioniše. U stvari, nemamo pravog razloga da očekujemo da hoće i probali smo na stotine puta. I baš u februaru, poslednji put kad smo radili ove oglede,
I saw a miracle starting to happen. What we found was most of these eggs didn't work, but then suddenly, one of them began to divide. That was so exciting. And then the egg divided again. And then again. And pretty soon, we had early-stage embryos with hundreds of cells forming those. We even DNA-tested some of these cells, and the DNA of the extinct frog is in those cells. So we're very excited. This is not a tadpole. It's not a frog. But it's a long way along the journey to producing, or bringing back, an extinct species. And this is news. We haven't announced this publicly before. We're excited. We've got to get past this point. We now want this ball of cells to start to gastrulate, to turn in so that it will produce the other tissues. It'll go on and produce a tadpole and then a frog. Watch this space. I think we're going to have this frog hopping glad to be back in the world again.
video sam da čudo počinje da se dešava. Otkrili smo da većina ovih jaja nije funkcionisala, ali onda iznenada jedno od njih je počelo da se deli. To je bilo tako uzbudljivo. I onda se jaje podelilo ponovo. I ponovo. I uskoro smo imali embrione u ranom stadijumu formirane od stotina ćelija. Čak smo testirali i DNK nekih od ovih ćelija i DNK istrebljene žabe je u ovim ćelijama. Tako da smo vrlo uzbuđeni. Ovo nije punoglavac. Nije ni žaba. Ali je veliki napredak na putu ka proizvodnji ili vraćanju istrebljene vrste. I ovo je novost. Nismo ovo ranije javno objavili. Uzbuđeni smo. Uspeli smo da pređemo ovu tačku. Sada hoćemo da ova lopta ćelija počne da gastrulira, da se savije tako da proizvede druga tkiva. Nastaviće i proizvešće punoglavca i onda žabu. Pratite ovo. Mislim da ćemo učiniti da se ova žaba vrati ponovo u svet. Hvala vam. (Aplauz)
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Nismo još to uradili, ali spremite svoje aplauze.
We haven't done it yet, but keep the applause ready.
The second project I want to talk to you about is the Thylacine Project. The thylacine looks a bit, to most people, like a dog, or maybe like a tiger, because it has stripes. But it's not related to any of those. It's a marsupial. It raised its young in a pouch, like a koala or a kangaroo would do, and it has a long history, a long, fascinating history, that goes back 25 million years. But it's also a tragic history.
Drugi projekat o kome želim da vam pričam je projekat Torbarski vuk. Torbarski vuk većini ljudi liči malo na psa ili možda na tigra jer ima pruge. Ali nije u srodstvu ni sa jednim. On je torbar. Podizao je mlade u torbi kao koala ili kengur i ima dugu istoriju, dugu, fascinantnu istoriju koja ide 25 miliona godina unazad. Ali je to isto tako i tragična istorija.
The first one that we see occurs in the ancient rain forests of Australia about 25 million years ago, and the National Geographic Society is helping us to explore these fossil deposits. This is Riversleigh. In those fossil rocks are some amazing animals. We found marsupial lions. We found carnivorous kangaroos. It's not what you usually think about as a kangaroo, but these are meat-eating kangaroos. We found the biggest bird in the world, bigger than that thing that was in Madagascar, and it too was a flesh eater. It was a giant, weird duck.
Prvi, koga vidimo, se pojavljuje u drevnim prašumama Australije pre oko 25 milona godina i Društvo Nacionalne geografije nam pomaže da istražimo ove naslage fosila. Ovo je Riversli. U tim fosilnim stenama su neke neverovatne životinje. Pronašli smo torbarske lavove. Pronašli smo kengure mesoždere. To nije onaj kengur kakvim ga obično zamišljate već su to kenguri koji jedu meso. Pronašli smo najveću pticu na svetu, veću od one koja je bila na Madagaskaru i ova je takođe bila mesožder. To je bila džinovska, čudna patka.
And crocodiles were not behaving at that time either. You think of crocodiles as doing their ugly thing, sitting in a pool of water. These crocodiles were actually out on the land and they were even climbing trees and jumping on prey on the ground. We had, in Australia, drop crocs. They really do exist.
Ni krokodili se nisu isto ponašali u to vreme. Zamišljate krokodile kako rade svoje gadne stvari dok sede u barama. Ovi krokodili su u stvari bili na kopnu i čak su se penjali na drveće i skakali na plen na zemlji. U Australiji smo imali "bacajuće krokodile".
(Laughter)
Oni stvarno postoje.
But what they were dropping on was not only other weird animals but also thylacines. There were five different kinds of thylacines in those ancient forests, and they ranged from great big ones to middle-sized ones to one that was about the size of a chihuahua. Paris Hilton would have been able to carry one of these things around in a little handbag, until a drop croc landed on her.
Ali oni se nisu bacali samo na druge čudne životinje već takođe na torbarske vukove. Bilo je pet različitih vrsta torbarskih vukova u ovim drevnim šumama i varirali su od ogromnih, preko onih srednje veličine do onih koji su bili otprilike veličine čivave. Paris Hilton bi mogla da nosi jednog od njih u maloj tašni dok "bacajući krokodil" ne padne na nju.
At any rate, it was a fascinating place, but unfortunately, Australia didn't stay this way. Climate change has affected the world for a long period of time, and gradually, the forests disappeared, the country began to dry out, and the number of kinds of thylacines began to decline, until by five million years ago, only one left. By 10,000 years ago, they had disappeared from New Guinea, and unfortunately, by 4,000 years ago, somebodies, we don't know who this was, introduced dingoes -- this is a very archaic kind of a dog -- into Australia.
U svakom pogledu to je bilo fascinantno mesto, ali na žalost, Australija nije ostala ovakva. Klimatske promene su uticale na svet u dugom vremenskom periodu i postepeno, šume su nestale, zemlja je počela da se suši i broj vrsta torbarskih vukova je počeo da opada, sve do pre pet miliona godina, samo je jedna ostala. Pre 10.000 godina nestali su sa Nove Gvineje i nažalost, pre 4.000 godina, neko je, ne znamo ko je to bio, uveo dingoe - to je vrlo arhaična vrsta psa - u Australiju.
And as you can see, dingoes are very similar in their body form to thylacines. That similarity meant they probably competed. They were eating the same kinds of foods. It's even possible that aborigines were keeping some of these dingoes as pets, and therefore they may have had an advantage in the battle for survival. All we know is, soon after the dingoes were brought in, thylacines were extinct in the Australian mainland, and after that they only survived in Tasmania.
Kao što možete da vidite, dingo je vrlo sličan po obliku tela torbarskom vuku. Ta sličnost znači da su se verovatno takmičili. Jeli su istu vrstu hrane. Čak je moguće da su Aboridžini čuvali neke od ovih dingoa kao kućne ljubimce i zbog toga su možda imali prednost u borbi za preživljavanje. Sve što znamo je da su ubrzo posle dovođenja dinga torbarski vukovi istrebljeni na australijskom kopnu i posle toga su samo preživeli na Tasmaniji.
Then, unfortunately, the next sad part of the thylacine story is that Europeans arrived in 1788, and they brought with them the things they valued, and that included sheep. They took one look at the thylacine in Tasmania, and they thought, hang on, this is not going to work. That guy is going to eat all our sheep. That was not what happened, actually. Wild dogs did eat a few of the sheep, but the thylacine got a bad rap. But immediately, the government said, that's it, let's get rid of them, and they paid people to slaughter every one that they saw. By the early 1930s, 3,000 to 4,000 thylacines had been murdered. It was a disaster, and they were about to hit the wall.
Sledeći tužni deo priče o torbarskom vuku je taj da su 1788. stigli Evropljani i doneli sa sobom stvari koje su im bile vredne, uključujući i ovcu. Videli su torbarskog vuka na Tasmaniji i pomislili: čekaj, ovo neće ići. Ovaj će da pojede sve naše ovce. U stvari, to se nije dogodilo. Divlji psi su pojeli nekoliko ovaca, a torbarski vukovi su lažno optuženi. Odmah zatim, vlada je rekla: hajde da ih se rešimo i platili su ljude da ubiju svakog kog sretnu. Do ranih 1930-ih, 3.000 do 4.000 torbarskih vukova je ubijeno. To je bila katastrofa i bili su blizu da dostignu vrhunac.
Have a look at this bit of film footage. It makes me very sad because, while it's a fascinating animal, and it's amazing to think that we had the technology to film it before it actually plunged off that cliff of extinction, we didn't, unfortunately, at this same time, have a molecule of concern about the welfare for this species. These are photos of the last surviving thylacine, Benjamin, who was in the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart. To add insult to injury, having swept this species nearly off the table, this animal, when it died of neglect -- The keepers didn't let it into the hutch on a cold night in Hobart. It died of exposure, and in the morning, when they found the body of Benjamin, they still cared so little for this animal that they threw the body in the dump.
Pogledajte ovaj snimak. Veoma me rastužuje jer je to fascinantna životinja i izgleda neverovatno da smo imali tehnologiju da to snimimo pre nego što je skočila u ponor istrebljenja i nismo u tom momentu, nažalost, imali ni molekul brige za dobrobit ove vrste. Ovo su fotografije poslednjeg preživelog torbarskog vuka, Bendžamina, koji je bilo u zoološkom vrtu Bomaris u Hobartu. Da situacija bude još gora, pošto je cela vrsta skoro počišćena, kad je ova životinja uginula zbog nebrige čuvari je nisu pustili u kavez na hladno veče u Hobartu. Uginula je od izlaganja nepovoljnim uslovima i ujutru, kad su našli Bendžaminovo telo, i dalje su tako malo marili za ovu životinju da su bacili telo na đubrište.
Does it have to stay this way? In 1990, I was in the Australian Museum. I was fascinated by thylacines. I've always been obsessed with these animals. And I was studying skulls, trying to figure out their relationships to other sorts of animals, and I saw this jar, and here, in the jar, was a little girl thylacine pup, perhaps six months old. The guy who had found it and killed the mother had pickled the pup, and they pickled it in alcohol. I'm a paleontologist, but I still knew alcohol was a DNA preservative.
Da li mora da ostane ovako? 1990. bio sam u Australijskom muzeju. Bio sam fasciniran torbarskim vukovima. Oduvek sam opsednut ovim životinjama. I proučavao sam lobanje pokušavajući da shvatim njihovu vezu sa drugim vrstama životinja i video sam ovu teglu i ovde, u tegli je bila mala štenica torbarskog vuka možda šest meseci stara. Čovek koji je našao i ubio majku, konzervirao je štene u alkoholu. Ja sam paleontolog ali znam da je alkohol DNK prezervativ.
But this was 1990, and I asked my geneticist friends, couldn't we think about going into this pup and extracting DNA, if it's there, and then somewhere down the line in the future, we'll use this DNA to bring the thylacine back? The geneticists laughed. But this was six years before Dolly. Cloning was science fiction. It had not happened. But then suddenly cloning did happen. And I thought, when I became director of the Australian Museum, I'm going to give this a go.
Ali ovo je bilo 1990. i pitao sam moje prijatelje genetičare da li bismo mogli da razmišljamo o tome da otvorimo ovo štene i izdvojimo DNK ako je tamo i onda ćemo u nekom momentu u budućnosti iskoristiti ovu DNK da vratimo torbarskog vuka? Genetičari su se smejali. Ali to je bilo šest godina pre Doli. Kloniranje je bilo naučna fantastika. Nije se desilo. Ali iznenada kloniranje se desilo. I pomislio sam, kad postanem direktor Australijskog muzeja, probaću ovo da uradim. Sastavio sam tim.
I put a team together. We went into that pup to see what was in it, and we did find thylacine DNA. It was a eureka moment. We were very excited. Unfortunately, we also found a lot of human DNA. Every old curator who'd been in that museum had seen this wonderful specimen, put their hand in the jar, pulled it out and thought, "Wow, look at that," plop, dropped it back in the jar, contaminating this specimen. And that was a worry. If the goal here was to get the DNA out and use the DNA down the track to try to bring a thylacine back, what we didn't want happening when the information was shoved into the machine and the wheel turned around and the lights flashed, was to have a wizened old horrible curator pop out the other end of the machine. It would've kept the curator very happy, but it wasn't going to keep us happy.
Otvorili smo štene da vidimo šta ima unutra i našli smo DNK torbarskog vuka. Bio je to "eureka momenat". Bili smo vrlo uzbuđeni. Nažalost, našli smo takođe puno ljudskih DNK. Svaki stari kustos koji je bio u tom muzeju video je ovaj divan uzorak, stavio ruku u teglu, izvadio ga i pomislio: "Oh, vidi ovo", buć, spustio ga nazad u teglu kontaminirajući ovaj uzorak. I to je bilo zabrinjavajuće. Ako je ovde cilj bio da izvadimo DNK i iskoristimo je kasnije da vratimo torbarskog vuka, onda ono što nismo želeli kad je informacija ubačena u mašinu i točak okrenut i svetla bljesnula, je to da smežurani stari grozni kustos izleti sa druge strane mašine. To bi veoma usrećilo kustosa ali ne bi usrećilo nas.
So we went back to these specimens and we started digging around, and particularly, we looked into the teeth of skulls, hard parts where humans had not been able to get their fingers, and we found much better quality DNA. We found nuclear mitochondrial genes. It's there. So we got it.
Tako da smo se vratili ovim uzorcima i počeli da kopamo i naročito smo tražili u zubima u lobanji, čvrstim delovima gde ljudi nisu mogli da stave svoje prste i našli smo mnogo kvalitetniju DNK. Našli smo mitohondrijske gene jedra. Tamo su. I dobili smo ih.
OK. What could we do with this stuff? Well, George Church, in his book, "Regenesis," has mentioned many of the techniques that are rapidly advancing to work with fragmented DNA. We would hope that we'll be able to get that DNA back into a viable form, and then, much like we've done with the Lazarus Project, get that stuff into an egg of a host species. It has to be a different species. What could it be? Why couldn't it be a Tasmanian devil? They're related, distantly, to thylacines. And then the Tasmanian devil is going to pop a thylacine out the south end.
Ok. Šta bismo mogli da uradimo sa ovim? Džordž Čerč je u svojoj knjizi "Ponovno rođenje" pomenuo mnoge tehnike za rad sa fragmentisanom DNK koje brzo napreduju. Nadali bismo se da ćemo moći da vratimo tu DNK u održivom obliku i onda, kao što smo uradili sa projektom Lazar, stavimo to u jaje domaćinske vrste. To mora da bude druga vrsta. Šta bi to moglo da bude? Može li da bude tasmanijski đavo? Oni su u daljem srodstvu sa torbarskim vukovima. I onda će tasmanijski đavo
Critics of this project say, hang on. Thylacine, Tasmanian devil? That's going to hurt. No, it's not. These are marsupials. They give birth to babies that are the size of a jelly bean. That Tasmanian devil's not even going to know it gave birth. It is, shortly, going to think it's got the ugliest Tasmanian devil baby in the world, so maybe it'll need some help to keep it going.
roditi torbarskog vuka. Kritičari ovog projekta kažu: čekajte. Torbarski vuk, tasmanijski đavo? To će boleti. Ne, neće. Oni su torbari. Oni rađaju bebe veličine žele bombone. Taj tasmanijski đavo čak neće ni znati da se okotio. Pomisliće, ukratko, da je to najružnija beba tasmanijskog đavola na svetu, pa će mu možda biti potrebna pomoć u daljem odgajanju.
Andrew Pask and his colleagues have demonstrated this might not be a waste of time. And it's sort of in the future, we haven't got there yet, but it's the kind of thing we want to think about. They took some of this same pickled thylacine DNA and they spliced it into a mouse genome, but they put a tag on it so that anything that this thylacine DNA produced would appear blue-green in the mouse baby. In other words, if thylacine tissues were being produced by the thylacine DNA, it would be able to be recognized. When the baby popped up, it was filled with blue-green tissues. And that tells us if we can get that genome back together, get it into a live cell, it's going to produce thylacine stuff.
Endru Pask i njegove kolege su pokazali da ovo možda neće biti protraćeno vreme. i to je ono kako bismo u budućnosti, gde još nismo stigli, ali to je ono kako želimo da razmišljamo. Oni su uzeli malo od ove iste konzervirane DNK torbarskog vuka i sastavili je u genom miša, ali su je obeležili tako da će se bilo šta što je ova DNK torbarskog vuka proizvela pojaviti u plavozelenoj boji kod bebe miša. Drugim rečima, ako su tkiva torbarskog vuka proizvedena od DNK torbarskog vuka, to će moći da se prepozna. Kad je beba izašla bila je puna plavozelenih tkiva. I to nam govori da, ako možemo da ponovo sastavimo taj genom, ubacimo ga u živu ćeliju, on će proizvesti tkiva torbarskog vuka.
Is this a risk? You've taken the bits of one animal and you've mixed them into the cell of a different kind of an animal. Are we going to get a Frankenstein? Some kind of weird hybrid chimera? And the answer is no. If the only nuclear DNA that goes into this hybrid cell is thylacine DNA, that's the only thing that can pop out the other end of the devil.
Da li je to rizik? Uzeli ste malo od jedne životinje i umešali to u ćeliju druge vrste životinje. Da li ćemo dobiti Frankenštajna? Neku vrstu hibridne himere? I odgovor je: ne. Ako je DNK jedra koja ide u ovu hibridnu ćeliju, DNK torbarskog vuka, to je onda jedino što će ispasti sa donje strane đavola.
OK, if we can do this, could we put it back? This is a key question for everybody. Does it have to stay in a laboratory, or could we put it back where it belongs? Could we put it back in the throne of the king of beasts in Tasmania, restore that ecosystem? Or has Tasmania changed so much that that's no longer possible? I've been to Tasmania. I've been to many of the areas where the thylacines were common. I've even spoken to people, like Peter Carter here, who when I spoke to him, was 90 years old, but in 1926, this man and his father and his brother caught thylacines. They trapped them. And when I spoke to this man, I was looking in his eyes and thinking, "Behind those eyes is a brain that has memories of what thylacines feel like, what they smelled like, what they sounded like." He led them around on a rope. He has personal experiences that I would give my left leg to have in my head. We'd all love to have this sort of thing happen. Anyway, I asked Peter, by any chance, could he take us back to where he caught those thylacines. My interest was in whether the environment had changed. He thought hard. It was nearly 80 years before this that he'd been at this hut.
Ako možemo da uradimo ovo, možemo li da ga vratimo u divljinu? Ovo je ključno pitanje za sve. Da li mora da ostane u laboratoriji ili ga možemo vratiti tamo gde pripada? Možemo li ga vratiti na tron kralja zveri na Tasmaniji, gde pripada, obnoviti taj ekosistem? Ili se Tasmanija promenila toliko da to više nije moguće? Bio sam na Tasmaniji u mnogim delovima gde su torbarski vukovi bili uobičajeni. Čak sam i govorio sa ljudima, kao sa Piterom Karterom ovde, koji je imao 90 godina kada sam razgovarao sa njim, ali 1926. ovaj čovek i njegov otac i brat hvatali su torbarske vukove. Hvatali su ih zamkama. I kada sam govorio sa ovim čovekom gledao sam u njegove oči i mislio: iza tih očiju je mozak koji ima sećanja na to kako su torbarski vukovi izgledali, kako su mirisali, kako su zvučali. Vodio ih je okolo na konopcu. On ima lična iskustva za koja bih dao levu nogu da ih imam u svojoj glavi. Svi bismo voleli da nam se tako nešto desilo. Pitao sam Pitera da li bi možda mogao da nas odvede tamo gde je hvatao ove torbarske vukove. Interesovalo me je da li se okruženje izmenilo. Napregao se da se seti. Mislim, to je bilo skoro 80 godina pre
At any rate, he led us down this bush track, and there, right where he remembered, was the hut, and tears came into his eyes. He looked at the hut. We went inside. There were the wooden boards on the sides of the hut where he and his father and his brother had slept at night. And he told me, as it all was flooding back in memories. He said, "I remember the thylacines going around the hut wondering what was inside," and he said they made sounds like "Yip! Yip! Yip!" All of these are parts of his life and what he remembers. And the key question for me was to ask Peter, has it changed? And he said no. The southern beech forests surrounded his hut just like it was when he was there in 1926. The grasslands were sweeping away. That's classic thylacine habitat. And the animals in those areas were the same that were there when the thylacine was around. So could we put it back? Yes.
njegovog boravka u ovoj kolibi. U svakom slučaju, poveo nas je niz stazu i tačno tamo gde se sećao bila je koliba i oči su mu zasuzile. Pogledao je kolibu. Ušli smo unutra. Drvene ploče su bile na zidovima kolibe gde su on, njegov otac i njegov brat spavali noću. I rekao mi je, kako mu je sve naviralo u sećanje. Rekao je: "Sećam se torbarskih vukova koji su kružili oko kolibe pitajući se šta je unutra" i rekao je da su pravili zvuke kao: "Jip! Jip! Jip!" Sve ovo su delovi njegovog života i onoga čega se seća. I moje ključno pitanje Piteru je bilo: da li se promenilo? I rekao je da nije. Šume na južnoj plaži su okruživale njegovu kolibu baš kao i kad je on bio tamo 1926. Pašnjaci su se prostirali. To je klasično stanište torbarskog vuka. I životinje u ovim oblastima su bile iste kao i u vreme kad je torbarski vuk bio tamo. Da li bismo onda mogli da ga vratimo tamo? Da.
Is that all we would do? And this is an interesting question. Sometimes you might be able to put it back, but is that the safest way to make sure it never goes extinct again? And I don't think so. I think gradually, as we see species all around the world, it's kind of a mantra that wildlife is increasingly not safe in the wild. We'd love to think it is, but we know it isn't. We need other parallel strategies coming online. And this one interests me. Some of the thylacines that were being turned in to zoos, sanctuaries, even at the museums, had collar marks on the neck. They were being kept as pets, and we know a lot of bush tales and memories of people who had them as pets, and they say they were wonderful, friendly. This particular one came in out of the forest to lick this boy and curled up around the fireplace to go to sleep. A wild animal.
Je li to sve što bismo uradili? I ovo je interesantno pitanje. Ponekad možda možete da ga vratite, ali da li je to najsigurniji način da obezbedite da više nikada ne dođe do istrebljenja, i ja mislim da nije. Mislim da je postepeno, kako gledamo vrste širom sveta, postala neka vrsta mantre da je u porastu nesigurnost divljeg sveta u divljini. Volimo da mislimo da nije, ali znamo da jeste. Trebaju nam druge paralelne strategije. I ovo je jedna koja me zanima. Neki od torbarskih vukova koje smo stavili u zoo vrtove u utočišta, čak i u muzeje, imali su otiske od ogrlice na vratu. Čuvali su ih kao ljubimce i znamo puno priča i sećanja iz šume ljudi koji su ih držali kao ljubimce i oni kažu da su bili divni, druželjubivi. Ovaj je došao iz šume da liže ovog dečaka i sklupčao se pored kamina da spava. Divlja životinja.
And I'd like to ask the question. We need to think about this. If it had not been illegal to keep these thylacines as pets then, would the thylacine be extinct now? And I'm positive it wouldn't. We need to think about this in today's world. Could it be that getting animals close to us so that we value them, maybe they won't go extinct? And this is such a critical issue for us because if we don't do that, we're going to watch more of these animals plunge off the precipice.
I želeo bih da postavim pitanje, svi treba da mislimo o ovome. Da nije bilo zabranjeno držati ove torbarske vukove kao ljubimce, da li bi onda oni bili istrebljeni? Siguran sam da ne bi. Treba da mislimo o ovome u današnjem svetu. Da li bi približavanjem životinja sebi tako da ih onda vrednujemo, možda ukinuli njihovo istrebljavanje? To je tako važna tema za nas jer ako to ne uradimo, gledaćemo više ovih životinja kako padaju u ponor istrebljenja.
As far as I'm concerned, this is why we're trying to do these kinds of de-extinction projects. We are trying to restore that balance of nature that we have upset.
Što se mene tiče, zbog ovoga pokušavamo da radimo ove projekte vraćanja vrsta u život. Pokušavamo da obnovimo onu ravnotežu u prirodi koju smo mi sami poremetili.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)