Southern Gastric Brooding Frog Analysis

Mike Archer, an Australian paleontologist, looked down through a microscope and saw that a single fertilised frog egg had divided in two, and so on. Eventually, the egg produced an embryo containing hundreds of cells. But this egg was special. Archer’s team had changed it with the DNA of the southern gastric brooding frog, a creature that has been extinct for more than 30 years.
Archer’s goal is simple: To bring the extinct gastric brooding frog back from extinction and, provide hope for the hundreds of other frogs that are heading that way. That is why he created the project “Lazarus”, he says “they will rise again”.
The southern gastric brooding frog was discovered in 1972 in Australia. The mother frog converts her stomachs into a womb to swallow her own eggs. Then stops making acid in her stomach to avoid digesting her own breeding. Around 20 to 25 tadpoles hatch inside her and the mucus from

So several teams started studying the frog, but they didn’t have long. “There was intense interest and all of a sudden it was gone,” says Archer. The last captive individual died in 1983, and the species was no more. A second species, the northern gastric brooding frog, was discovered in 1984 in Queensland’s National Park. But a year later, it too went extinct.
Archer has several reasons for trying to clone it. Mainly because there’s the medical potential. But really there is a more important reason that drives him. “If we were responsible for the extinction of the species, deliberately or inadvertently, we have a moral responsibility or imperative to undo that if we can,” he says. But actually, no one really knows why the frogs disappeared or if we played any role. He also thinks that restoring the frogs might help to expand his other projects, like resurrecting the