Frozen zoo: how scientists are trying to save animals from extinction - ForumDaily
The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.
Переклад цього матеріалу українською мовою з російської було автоматично здійснено сервісом Google Translate, без подальшого редагування тексту.
Bu məqalə Google Translate servisi vasitəsi ilə avtomatik olaraq rus dilindən azərbaycan dilinə tərcümə olunmuşdur. Bundan sonra mətn redaktə edilməmişdir.

Frozen zoo: how scientists are trying to save animals from extinction

When UC San Diego researcher Kurt Benirschke began collecting skin samples from rare and endangered animals in 1972, he had no clear plan for what to do with them. He believed that tools would one day be developed to save these animals. A few years later, he moved his collection to the San Diego Zoo and named it the Frozen Zoo. CNN.

Photo: GreenZone COP 27 Egypt

“There was famously a poster above the Frozen Zoo with the quote, ‘You have to collect things for reasons you don’t yet understand,’” says Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at the San Diego Zoo and one of Benirschke’s early collaborators. . “We felt that we were custodians of this growing collection, which would have a value for the future that we could not appreciate then.”

On the subject: A schoolboy from Britain turned out to be smarter than Einstein and Hawking: he scored the highest possible score in an IQ test

Benirschke passed away in 2018, but his legacy lives on. Today, the Frozen Zoo is the world's largest animal cryobank, which stores samples of more than 10 animals of 500 species.

For a long time it was a one-of-a-kind project. However, similar conservation efforts have sprung up around the world in recent years, and tools are now available that Benirschke did not yet have. At the same time, the clock is ticking for many endangered species.

"Irreplaceable repository of very rare animals"

According to the WWF Living Planet Report 2020, populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish have declined by an average of 1970% since 68 – animals and plants are threatened with extinction in the coming decades and centuries.

At the current rate of biodiversity loss, some scientists believe that preserving specimens of species that may not exist tomorrow is no longer a visionary goal, but a scientific necessity.

“As our efforts accumulated, we realized that we were building an irreplaceable repository of very rare animals,” Ryder says. “Because we have cages in the Frozen Zoo, we can now apply new techniques and new technologies to expand our understanding and learn more information that is directly relevant to preventing species extinction.”

Ryder says many important milestones have been achieved in genetics since Frozen Zoo was founded, starting with the cloning of the first animal, a sheep named Dolly, in 1996. Since 2001, four endangered species have been cloned using genetic material from the Frozen Zoo: the Indian gaur, a humpbacked Asian wild bull; banteng, a type of cattle from Southeast Asia; the Przewalski's horse, once found throughout Mongolia and recently extinct in the wild, and the black-footed polecat, thought to be extinct in the wild until it reappeared in 1981, but was then almost wiped out by an epidemic.

genetic rescue

While cloning isn't perfect - a cloned Indian gaur only lived for 48 hours - it's a useful tool to help save an endangered species, as it can increase genetic diversity. When a species' population declines, the remaining animals are forced to interbreed, and the genetic pool shrinks, further threatening survival. But cloned black-footed ferrets, for example, were born in 2020 from specimens collected in 1988, meaning their genetic profile was far more diverse than the current population.

“In animal species, genetic diversity is what gives them resilience, the ability to recover from natural disasters, attacks by viruses, attacks by diseases. This is because the more different types of genetics a species has, the more likely some of them will survive,” explains Brandon Noble, professor of regenerative medicine at the University of Westminster in London and chairman of The Frozen Ark. , British cryobank for animals.

Frozen Ark was founded in 2004 with the same goal as the Frozen Zoo, but with a different structure: it is not a single collection tied to a single institution, but a distributed network of more than two dozen institutions such as zoos, museums and universities across around the world, each sharing their collection and knowledge.

Although Frozen Ark has more specimens than the frozen zoo - 48 of the 000 species - about 5% of them are made up of DNA, not living cells, which are used differently and must be stored at much cooler temperatures.

DNA samples cannot be used to clone an animal, but they are needed to create a genetic blueprint for species that may become extinct. “This information could be used for a range of different scientific studies, from cancer research to understanding recovery processes such as limb regrowth,” says Lisa Yon, professor of wildlife medicine at the University of Nottingham and scientific advisor at Frozen Ark. “By saving these resources, we will allow not only current scientists, but also future generations of scientists to make all sorts of new discoveries.”

Cell with any other name

Freezing cells involves a more subtle process than with DNA, to avoid the formation of ice crystals when cells are frozen to -196 Celsius. Different cells also require different freezing procedures; for example, amphibian cells are difficult to freeze properly and are therefore severely underrepresented in cryobanks. And some of the technologies that would make the best use of cell lines still need to be improved.

"A lot of the things we want to do we can't do yet," says Tallis Matson of Nature's Safe, a UK-based cryobank that collects living cells and gametes (sperm and eggs). He predicts that in the next 10 to 30 years it will be possible to turn these cells into pluripotent stem cells that can be reprogrammed to produce sperm and eggs.

Once that is possible, an embryo can be created from sperm and egg and then implanted into a surrogate of an endangered species, again providing much-needed genetic diversity.

This method also opens up the prospect of reviving completely extinct species using surrogates of the most genetically similar surviving animals. “We have cells preserved from extinct species, but that's not why we do it,” says Ryder. “We've been asked to preserve cells from some of the last individuals of a species—or literally the last individual—and we are doing that, but we don't really expect to be able to bring a species back from extinction from a single animal.”

Problems ahead

The accelerating climate crisis will put additional pressure on ecosystems, making the work of cryobanks even more important. “I consider cryopreservation to be the absolute cornerstone of conservation. We are now facing the sixth mass extinction and we need to be able to give future generations a way to bring these species back to life,” Matson says.

Many of the challenges facing these projects are practical. “Sustaining the Frozen Zoo well into the future is one of the biggest challenges,” says curator Marlys Hawk. “We want to continue to collect more samples, ensuring that the ones we already have will remain there after our lifetime.” This includes providing targeted funding for liquid nitrogen for DNA freezing and replacing cryotanks as they age.”

One of the main challenges will be to convince conservation agencies that cryobanking is a viable strategy and worth funding. “Many of us do this without any tangible support other than donations or grants, without government support,” says Yon. “Cryobanking is increasingly recognized as a vital resource, so it’s a little puzzling why there isn’t financial support.”

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants, and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York.

Finally, all researchers agree that greater collaboration between all cryobanks is necessary to achieve success. “The challenge is huge, no one can do it on their own,” says Matson. — A million species are in danger. We need 50 different genetic samples from each, so 50 million samples; for each of them, we need five vials for each sample, so we need to store hundreds of millions of samples.”

Ryder says he is working on building a global network to store the materials he has already collected.

"If we had a conversation with future generations, they would say, 'Please save as much biodiversity as possible now,'" he adds. “And they would say, do it by any means necessary.”

Read also on ForumDaily:

Rockets exploded in Poland: NATO reaction and new details of what happened

Ice sculptures, slides and fireworks: 10 great winter festivals in the USA

Miscellanea cloning World frozen zoo endangered species
Subscribe to ForumDaily on Google News

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis. 



 
1080 requests in 1,265 seconds.