De-extinction

De-extinction uses biotechnology or selective breeding to create organisms resembling extinct species or to restore some of their ecological traits. It does not necessarily recreate an extinct species exactly.

Back-breeding: Selective breeding that aims to recover traits of an ancestral or extinct population from living descendants. It seeks extinct-looking traits through breeding rather than genetic engineering.
Woolly mammoth: An extinct elephant species adapted to cold environments during the Pleistocene. It is the best-known target for projects editing Asian elephant genomes toward mammoth traits.
Species concept: A framework for deciding how organisms are grouped into species. It complicates claims that an engineered organism is the same species as its extinct model.
Rewilding: A conservation approach that restores ecological processes, often by reducing intensive human management. De-extinction proposals often present released proxies as agents of ecosystem restoration.
Genome reconstruction: The inference of an organism’s genome from incomplete or degraded genetic evidence. Extinct genomes may contain gaps that prevent exact genetic recovery.
Genome editing: The targeted alteration of an organism’s DNA sequence using molecular tools. Researchers can use it to introduce selected extinct-species variants into a living relative’s genome.
Quagga: An extinct subspecies of plains zebra with distinctive reduced striping on its body. The Quagga Project selectively breeds zebras for a quagga-like coat pattern.
Genetic engineering: The deliberate modification of an organism’s genetic material using biotechnology. It is a broader practice that can contribute to de-extinction without aiming to revive extinct species.
Trophic cascade: An ecological chain reaction in which changes at one trophic level affect others. A proxy could reshape ecosystems through food-web effects that are difficult to predict.
Ancient DNA: Genetic material preserved from organisms that lived in the past. Its degradation and contamination constrain which extinct genomes can be studied.

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