he'll turn the dunnart into a much larger tassie tiger.ts dna. we compare that to the dna of your extinct species, the tasmanian tiger, and we look at everywhere that those two ginos or those two piles of dna, if you like, are different. once you've identified those differences, it's just a matter of then going in and making all of those edits to turn your dunnart genome or cell into a thylacine cell. >> you're saying that dunnart, that little field mouse marsupial dunnart, is closer than, say, the tasmanian devil? >> but that little dunnart is a ferocious carnivore even though it's very, very small, and it's a very good surrogate for us to be able to do all this editing in. >> reporter: a native of minnesota, chris helgen is director of the australian museum research institute in sydney. he understands the push to de-extinct the tassie tiger. >> this is one of my favorite mammals. >> really? >> and i love all mammals. i am a mammal guy. this is a special, special animal. >> reporter: he took us upstairs to his lab to show us why. >> so th

want to ask you is that you yourself mentioned that you are established now and we were established in tassi gave you the key to an empty room and told you to go here and see what we need. the table , the chair , the phone, everything was unprecedented. it will help you. reorganizing this issue is that people, i mean, i want to say this way, you feel certain things yourself, you come to it yourself. and he comes and finds you at all , he says, well, this is it, then you look , you see, not much, no , i don't want to say this as your weakness, i am a reporter, this can happen to me , you see, if i have a soft structure , the same thing can happen to me. it happens a lot. something happened to him and it was an experience for me i understand that there is a problem here. i have to follow it. if i follow any method , it will be based on my experience and that of those around me. for example, suppose that we followed an incident on the radio and television during the new transformational period. this is what he said. let's work document-oriented . let's go to a place where i can follow my own ta