Genetic modification proposed to save endangered species

Genetic modification of animals so that they can deal with changing climate and habitats may be the only way to save some of the most endangered species from becoming extinct, according to biologists who want to start a debate on how to stem species loss.  Biologist Michael Thomas said conservationists needed to debate what he and his colleagues called “facilitated adaptation”, which involved rescuing populations or species by introducing gene variants that allow them to survive in changing temperatures or different ecological niches. “Even the most conservative estimates predict that 15–40% of living species will be effectively extinct by 2050 as a result of climate change, habitat loss and other consequences of human activities,” wrote Thomas, of Idaho State University in Pocatello, and his colleagues in a comment article for the journal Nature. This could happen in several ways. Animals from a threatened population could be hybridised with individuals from the same species that were better adapted to a new environment. Or, if scientists could identify the genes that made one population more suited to an environment than another, they could insert those genes directly into the less-suited populations or individuals. The most extreme (and most likely controversial) idea proposed by Thomas is to take genes from a well-adapted species and insert them into the genomes of endangered individuals from completely different species...more