Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life. On July 30, 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists reversed time. They brought an animal back from extinction, if only to watch it become extinct again. The animal they revived was a kind of wild goat known as a bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex. The bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was a large, handsome creature, reaching up to 220 pounds and sporting long, gently curved horns. For thousands of years it lived high in the Pyrenees, the mountain range that divides France from Spain, where it clambered along cliffs, nibbling on leaves and stems and enduring harsh winters. Then came the guns. But Celia’s cells lived on, preserved in labs in Zaragoza and Madrid. The dodo and the great auk, the thylacine and the Chinese river dolphin, the passenger pigeon and the imperial woodpecker—the bucardo is only one in the long list of animals humans have driven extinct, sometimes deliberately. “We are at that moment,” he told me.
That time has come. Nevertheless, they’ve made progress. Microarray - How Does It Work? | Unsolved Mysteries of Human Health. Bio 6B/McCauley - DNA Electrophoresis Method. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Animation Quiz 5 - Southern Blot. DNA Used As Rewritable Data Storage In Cells. Teachers' Domain Animation: Plasmid Transformation. Sanger Technique NOVA | Anthrax Investigation. Anthrax Investigation PBS Airdate: June 30, 2009 NEIL DeGRASSE TYSON: When a murder is committed, one of the key ways to link the culprit with the crime is by tracing the murder weapon. For instance, every gun leaves a unique signature on the bullets it fires. Match the lethal bullet to the gun, you might find your murderer. But what if the murder weapon isn't a bullet, but a tiny microbe, invisible to the naked eye, a bacterium? That was the challenge facing the F.B.I., in 2001, when they saw their first real case of bioterrorism.
And, as correspondent Peter Standring reports, even microbes can leave telltale signs of their origin. PETER STANDRING (Correspondent): From the outside, this could be just another science building at Northern Arizona University. You don't get in here without one of these suits, and a damn good reason. Our story begins just after 9/11, with the wreckage at Ground Zero still fresh and Americans confronting the possibility they are under attack again.