London, (GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE)

By Ian Sample

In a breakthrough Jurassic Park-like experiment, scientists have resurrected genes from the Tasmanian tiger - a meat-eating marsupial that became extinct more than 70 years ago - by injecting them into mouse embryos.

The Tasmanian tiger, the largest of the carnivorous marsupials, was wiped out in the wild by intensive hunting in the early 1900s. The stripy, wolf-like creatures grew up to 1.80m in length and had long, stiff tails and bulky heads.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne and Texas University in Houston extracted DNA from four 100-year-old museum specimens, including three preserved in alcohol, the journal PLoS One reported. They isolated a string of genes from each and injected it into early-stage mouse embryos.

Tests on the growing mice revealed that a gene from the Tasmanian tiger called Col2a1 had switched on and was driving the growth of bone and cartilage in the young animals.

"This is the first time DNA from an extinct species has been used to induce a functional response in another living organism," said Andrew Pask, who led the study. Scientists now hope to use the technique to understand the role of other genes found in extinct animals.