The Best Australian Science Writing 2013

by Jane McCredie

  Why should the extinction of Australian organisms concern us? I’ve had people tell me: ‘I don’t give a stuff about cute furry animals. What have they ever done for me?’ The answer, I think, is almost precisely the same as to the question of why human rights are important, even when they concern people we’ll never meet. First and foremost, it is a matter of values. The demise of a bat may not weigh greatly in the balance of human wellbeing, but it speaks volumes about the human soul. Do we wish to be despoilers and executioners of the natural world? Or do we want our children to have the opportunity to enjoy a world as bountiful and diverse as the one our parents bequeathed to us?

  Politics

  The future

  Alive as a dodo

  Nicky Phillips

  For more than 3 billion years since single-cell organisms first appeared on the planet, life has evolved in one direction only. When a plant or animal becomes extinct, there is no coming back. Or so we thought.

  In early 2013 Australian scientists revealed they had reversed natural selection. Not only had the aptly named Lazarus Project group revived the genome of an extinct species, the gastric-brooding frog, they had also grown embryos containing the bizarre amphibian’s DNA – the crucial first step in their attempt to resurrect a dead species.

  The head of the team, University of New South Wales palaeontologist Mike Archer, announced the milestone at the TEDx-DeExtinction event in Washington in front of international peers pursuing the same goal with other long-dead creatures – the passenger pigeon, woolly mammoth and Spanish ibex.

  What stands out about the Australian team, however, is the pace of their progress. While other groups are years, more likely decades, from achieving their goal, the Lazarus team could have a gastric-brooding frog hopping back to life in the next few years.

  The precise motivation for reviving a species, a process some call de-extinction, differs among its revivers, but a central theme exists. Aside from the ‘wow factor’, Archer says, scientists hope their attempt to turn science fiction into reality will help conserve the world’s ever-diminishing biodiversity.

  Cloning technology could not only bring back extinct species, especially those vanquished by humans, it could also play a vital role in conserving critically threatened plants and animals living today.

  ‘If it is clear that we exterminated these species, then I think we’ve got a moral imperative to try to do something if we can,’ Archer says.

  As with all endeavours that challenge the natural order of things, de-extinction has critics. Some conservationists fear the ability to revive species from the dead will distract from efforts to rescue the vast number of living yet endangered creatures.

  Others wonder what kind of environment awaits revived species. If the reason they went extinct in the first place still exists, would we be resurrecting plants and animals only to watch them endure the same fate?

  Mike Tyler’s first encounter with the gastric-brooding frog came in 1974 when he received a call from a pair of Queensland schoolboys who had collected a frog with a bizarre method of brooding its young.

  Female gastric-brooders would swallow their fertilised eggs and transform their stomach into a uterus where the young would metamorphose from tadpoles into baby frogs.

  Close to bursting, the mother would then regurgitate her offspring one by one.

  ‘My feeling was that we were looking at something remarkable,’ Tyler, a herpetologist at the University of Adelaide, says.

  Tales of the bizarre creature quickly sparked the interest of the medical fraternity, who looked to the species for insights on how to treat stomach disorders.

  But, just as this interest peaked, the frog vanished from the wild in 1979, mostly likely a victim of habitat destruction and the human-spread chytrid fungus that continues to decimate global frog populations today.

  When the last two adult frogs Tyler raised in his laboratory died in 1983, the species officially became extinct.

  Even though it would be years before scientists would attempt to clone a mammal, let alone an extinct species, Tyler had the foresight to preserve a gastric-brooding frog in his deep freezer.

  ‘I thought it was a very special creature. At least I’d have material other people could use in the future,’ he says.

  Forty years later, Tyler told Archer of his frozen specimen. Lazarus’ resurrection could begin.

  Over the past five years, the team’s Monash University genetics specialists, Andrew French and Jitong Guo, have painstakingly inserted single cells containing the DNA of the frozen frog into hundreds of donor eggs from a distant relative, the great barred frog, whose DNA had been deactivated by UV light.

  In the beginning, the single cell frog eggs ‘just sat there’, Archer says. ‘But then, all of a sudden, one of the cells divided, and then it divided again, and again. There were a lot of highfives around the laboratory at that point,’ he says.

  The cloning technique, known as somatic nuclear cell transfer, was used in 2003 by Spanish scientists to resurrect a recently extinct native goat – it survived for 10 days – and was similar to the process used to clone Dolly the sheep.

  In the lab, the Lazarus cells continued to divide into three-day-old embryos. But then they died.

  Genetic tests revealed the embryos, known as blastulae, contained the DNA of the extinct frog so the team is confident their extinct genome is functioning.

  ‘We know not all embryos survive,’ French says.

  The quality of the donor egg, injecting the extinct DNA, even the jelly the cells are cultured in can influence their survival, he says. ‘The planets just have to align on the day.’

  While the team are yet to bring back the bizarre amphibian, their success so far can prevent other frogs from becoming extinct.

  ‘The project is much bigger than the gastric-brooding frog,’ says Simon Clulow, the team’s youngest member and expert frog wrangler from the University of Newcastle.

  With each species that is extinguished from the planet, a little piece of diversity is lost forever.

  But the story need not end there, Clulow says.

  If the team succeeds in cloning a gastric-brooding frog using a close relative as a scaffold, it demonstrates cross-cloning one species with another is possible.

  One of Clulow’s greatest passions is advocating for a national gene bank, which stores the tissue of endangered species that could be used to prop up dwindling wild populations or, should the creature go the way of the dodo, allow it to be revived later.

  ‘This project provides irrefutable evidence that gene banking is valid,’ he says.

  But for University of Adelaide ecologist Corey Bradshaw, attempts to resurrect extinct animals detract from efforts to conserve critically endangered species because they fail to solve the drivers of extinction.

  Species revived from a few specimens would contain little genetic diversity, making them vulnerable to future threats and at risk of becoming extinct all over again.

  ‘It’s not solving the real problem,’ Bradshaw says. ‘If we encourage this sort of behaviour it’s a massive financial distraction.’

  Clulow disagrees, saying the Lazarus Project was inexpensive compared with other scientific endeavours and the money was donated from entrepreneur and philanthropists such as Dick Smith and geneticist John Shine.

  ‘We haven’t touched a cent of public money,’ he says.

  With thousands of species around the world under threat – mainly from habitat destruction and disease – Archer wants to assist attempts to save them, not sidetrack them.

  ‘I’m exploring every conceivable initiative that’s going to optimise conservation, not only for species that are struggling to survive today but potentially even some of the ones that are lost,’ he says.

  What makes a species an ideal candidate for revival depends on who you ask. Most proponents agree the decision needs to consider whether it is technically feasible. Is there functional and intact DNA? Is there a close relative
to donate an egg? Also whether it would be practical to re-introduce the animal into the wild.

  Given that DNA decays over time, 65-million-years-dead dinosaurs will not make a return appearance. Jurassic Park remains science fiction.

  Neither would it be sensible to resurrect species whose habitat has disappeared or changed dramatically, says Ryan Phelan, a founder of the Revive & Restore project, part of the non-profit The Long Now Foundation.

  The organisation has chosen the passenger pigeon, which once flocked across North America in their hundreds of millions, as its keystone revival species.

  The project’s leader, Californian geneticist Ben Novak, says many factors make the passenger pigeon a perfect contender. Its genome is shorter and more manageable than mammals and it performed a vital ‘biological dance’ within forest ecosystems before hunters blew them from the sky.

  ‘These dense flocks would come into roost, depleting resources, fertilising the ground, letting sunlight in and allow many other animals to flourish,’ Novak says.

  But unlike the Lazarus team, who recovered a complete sequence of intact DNA from frozen frog tissue, Novak has only fragments of the passenger pigeon’s genetic blueprint. Other groups, including a South Korean team attempting to revive the woolly mammoth, face similar problems.

  Even with a full passenger pigeon genome Novak’s team would still face the bigger hurdle of how to insert its DNA into a donor embryo and implant that into a surrogate mother, given chicks develop inside hard-shelled eggs.

  But the team, which includes world-leading Harvard geneticist, George Church, sees these issues as workable challenges.

  Their plan, broadly speaking, is to sequence many fragments of passenger pigeon DNA from museum specimens and compare them with the genome of the bird’s closest living relative, the band-tailed pigeon, to reveal the extinct bird’s most important traits.

  This information is then fed into a specialised sequencing technology, developed by Church, which can manufacture parts of the passenger pigeon’s genome that can be slotted into the band-tailed pigeon’s DNA. If they succeed, the edited sequence could be inserted into the genome of stem cells of another close relative, the common rock pigeon.

  These stems cells could then be coaxed to form germ cells – sperm or egg cells – which could then be inserted into the developing embryo of its cousin, in the hope the cells migrate to the chick’s sex organs.

  If this works, the chick would carry the doctored DNA of the passenger pigeon, and if bred with another such bird would create a chick with passenger pigeon traits. These features could be selected for in subsequent generations until the team produce a bird that is, to all intents and purposes, a passenger pigeon.

  ‘It’s my job to bring the passenger pigeon back to life, not as a science novelty or a zoo attraction but back into the skies above,’ Novak says.

  But reintroducing extinct species into the wild is a concern for some conservationists, who say ecosystems transform, some to a greater extent than others, when species go extinct.

  David Bowman, an ecology professor at the University of Tasmania, says bringing back an extinct species raises the same issues as introducing non-natives.

  Bowman is not against the idea of introducing foreign species to perform critical roles within an ecosystem – last year he suggested Australia introduce large herbivores such as elephants to contain introduced grass species taking over the continent’s centre – but bringing back species from the dead is expensive, and will likely face opposition from the public.

  He uses the community angst surrounding the introduction of the beleaguered Tasmanian devil, which remains in the land of the living but only just, onto Maria Island as an example.

  ‘People think the devil might endanger other animals because it’s not native to the island,’ Bowman says.

  Archer, who previously led an attempt to revive the Tasmanian tiger, has heard all these criticisms before, but he won’t be deterred.

  ‘It’s the “You can’t do it” zone that attracts me,’ he says.

  Grand plans

  In the genes

  Probably a sacrifice

  Ian Gibbins

  I cannot tell you the manner of my death.

  After all these centuries in the bog, the peat,

  the deep encompassing darkness,

  the enveloping mists and moss,

  I have no knowledge, it is beyond my ken.

  After all these centuries, I wonder

  how it is, how it was, what difference

  one more breath might have made,

  the songs I might have sung,

  the poems and sermons I might have heard.

  After all these centuries, the sun

  is more intense than I remember:

  I must close my eyes to the unaccustomed glare;

  I must retreat from the flashes and incandescent

  counter-lighting floods you aim in my direction.

  After all these centuries, I cannot walk away

  from this place of outcasts and disembodied sprites:

  my sandals and ceremonial capes have been purloined;

  my feet, swathed in pristine cotton, linger in the distance,

  errant, beyond the power of my will.

  The band around my neck no longer feels tight.

  After all these centuries, its leather plaits,

  its strangling knots no longer cut my flesh.

  Protected by my cap and your soft-gloved hands,

  this simply is how I have come to rest.

  Exhumed

  Hidden

  Fire on the mountain: A walk on Mt Stromlo

  Andrew Croome

  In the burnt-out dome of the Yale-Columbia telescope, every footstep echoes. The effect is so loud that it feels deliberate, as if this building was once an acoustic chamber rather than an observatory. Missing its windows, roof and telescope, the Yale-Columbia is the first ruin visitors come by on Mount Stromlo. Rust bleeds from the machinery that once manoeuvred the dome and an electric motor rests on what was formerly the telescope’s mount, its innards gashed open.

  The place feels like a monument, but to what? Outside, the sun is strong and the air surprisingly still. The observatory and its eclectic mix of white domes stretch across the length of the mountain top, a ridge of volcanic rock that runs on a north– south alignment. The long views are east, towards Canberra, and west, towards the Murrumbidgee River and the Brindabella ranges. On the far hills you can see corridors of younger, greener forest: the path of the fire that, almost ten years ago, devastated this place, claiming five telescopes, the director’s residence, the workshop and the lion’s share of the mountain’s living quarters and houses.

  At that time, Mount Stromlo was blanketed in pines. The fire vanquished all but one small cluster, which sits at a bend on the road to the hilltop. These are Canary Island pines. Stromlo has always been a place of experiments, and these are one: planted early in the last century to determine the suitability of different species in a (decreasingly) Australian landscape. They survived because, unlike the rest of their cousins, their bark happens to resist fire.

  To the north of the Yale-Columbia is the mountain’s high point. There sits another, older ruin – a cross-shaped concrete building with a circular chamber at its centre and four small abutting rooms. This is the Oddie telescope, the place where observing on Mount Stromlo began. That was in 1911, the year in which Ernest Rutherford devised his model of the atom, and five years before Einstein would publish his theory of relativity. The telescope was a nine-inch Grubb refractor, donated by James Oddie, a Ballarat businessman who died before it was installed. Three men came with it: Melbourne astronomers Pietro Baracchi and JM Baldwin, and a caretaker, Robert Magill.

  The view they saw then looked over a capital as yet unmade and, depending on the cloud cover, straight up at the stars. Baracchi’s wife had recently died, and the dome must have felt a special type of isolation: a capsule on the point of an empt
y ridge, only the occasional farmhouse light in the darkness below.

  Today, over the Oddie’s entrance, the filament hangs out of a burnt light socket. In one room is the wreck of a series of gears, in another a rusted switchboard. A third room has a tap and was presumably the kitchen, which doubled as Magill’s bedroom (Baracchi and Baldwin had their own). The floor is concrete. Before the protection of the pines the winter winds must have been bitterly cold. Much later an astronomer would fall onto the floor here, remaining unconscious and unfound until morning, detaching, of all things, his retina.

  North of the Oddie a track leads into a small saddle and, after a minute or so, to an outcrop. The way is watched by kangaroos, and the ground is sparsely littered with pieces of iron. Astronomy is a practical science that remakes and recycles, and a hundred years of it on the mountain has left things scattered, cast off and discarded. It looks like junk, but it could also be called invention. Long before the fires, parts of the observatory’s history were swallowed up this way. A beautiful octagonal kite house, like something from an English garden, was dismantled, and the locations and fates of what were once full buildings, including a magnetic hut, are now mysteries. In the bush sits an old radio telescope, orders of magnitude smaller than the enormous radio arrays now dotted around the globe. It feels as if the chances of a thing’s survival here depend on how quickly it can become obsolete.

  On the outcrop is a white picket fence enclosing a small patch of ground. The man who dreamt of this observatory, and who lobbied hard and long to get it, was its first director, Walter Geoffrey Duffield. This is his grave. When he died of influenza in 1929, his family and staff buried him here. Photographs of the graveside ceremony show mourners gathered on a much barer outcrop, under a solitary she-oak. That tree is now gone and at the grave grow the emblems of Australian science, bottlebrush. On Duffield’s stone is a final instruction to his observatory, the words of the poet-scientist Alfred Noyes: ‘Take thou the torch, carry it out of sight into the great new age I must not know, into the great new realm I must not tread’. Looking back at the mountain, where a Nobel prize for the discovery of the accelerating universe hangs in the observatory, you can only presume Duffield would believe they did.