- Pair Victoria Gill
- Science Correspondent, BBC News
49 minutes ago
Vets at Chester Zoo take a tissue sample from a talkative lory, an endangered tropical bird.
“He’s gone,” whispers Gabby Drake, a veterinarian at Chester Zoo, holding a stethoscope to the feathered chest of a 28-year-old bright red tropical parrot.
The bird is a talkative lory – an elderly resident of Chester Zoo, and a species listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as vulnerable to extinction.
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It is sad to see that this striking and characterful bird should be put to sleep. His little clawed paws are gnarled and suffer from arthritis too bad to treat.
But this is not the end for the unique genetic code contained in its cells. A few small pieces of his body will join samples taken from 100 species. They will be frozen – stored indefinitely – in the UK’s largest organic living tissue bank, Nature’s Safe.
In vials filled with a nutrient-rich, cell-friendly antifreeze, the samples are stored at -196°C, the temperature at which all of the cells’ natural chemical processes stop – they are suspended in animation.
Photo credit, NAtures Safe
Tissue vials are stored in liquid nitrogen.
The idea is that at some point in the future – decades, maybe even centuries from now, they might be resurrected. This is a frozen backup solution in case of extinction.
Life resumes its course
Conservationists say we are losing species faster than ever.
Amid a biodiversity crisis that the United Nations says threatens one million species of plants and animals with extinction, some scientists are now scrambling to figure out what to put in the freezer for the ‘coming.
“It won’t prevent extinction, but it will definitely help,” says Tullis Matson, founder of Nature’s Safe.
Photo credit, NAture’s Safe
Dr. Tullis Matson, founder of Nature’s Safe, began by working with rare domestic breeds.
Mr. Tullis is a tall, friendly man who doesn’t mince words regarding his charity’s mission to preserve the living tissue of wild animals.
“This is where life begins once more,” he beams, showing me the image of a vial of cheetah skin cells under the microscope.
The screen is full of densely packed skin cells – the building blocks of a body. The black dot in the middle of each connected, spiky cell is a nucleus containing a unique set of genetic instructions that made, in this case, a now-deceased cheetah.
“This animal died in 2019,” says Tullis Matson. “We woke up these cells a few days ago – and you can see now, they’re all over the screen. They’ve multiplied.”
Skin cells are very useful for this endeavor, especially a type of connective tissue cell called a fibroblast.
They are essential for wound healing and repair, and following being taken out of the freezer and warmed to body temperature in a bath of necessary nutrients, they divide and multiply wonderfully in a dish.
Photo credit, Ben Novak/Revive and Restore
Kurt, Przewalski’s cloned horse, lives at the San Diego Zoo
One of the possible future uses of these cells is the cloning of new animals, using these thawed DNA packages.
Animal cloning is not new. It was in 1996 that Scottish scientists cloned the sheep Dolly, by fusing a cell from one sheep with an egg from another. It is a reproductive technology, born in the field of domestic animals and now oriented towards conservation.
The American biotechnology company Revive and Restore recently produced a clone from the skin cells of an endangered black-footed ferret that had been dead for decades. Her eggs had been frozen in 1988.
The fusion of a ferret fibroblast with an egg created an embryo, and a clone – Elizabeth Ann the black-footed ferret – was born in December 2020.
They used the same basic approach to clone a Przewalski’s horse – a species believed to be the last truly “wild” horse alive – at a cost of $60,000 (37,242,815 FCFA). The clone, named Kurt, lives at the San Diego Zoo.
Photo credit, Ben Novak/Revive and Restore
A clone of a black-footed ferret was born in December 2020
“It was actually cheaper for the zoo to clone a horse – to bring more genetic diversity to the US population of the species – than to ship a horse from a European zoo,” says scientist Dr Ben Novak. main of Revive and Restore.
What species should we freeze?
Genetic diversity is important. When the population of a species decreases, it can lead to inbreeding. In mammals, offspring receive a set of genetic instructions from each biological parent. And if those parents are related, the genetic diseases they have are much more likely to be passed on.
According to Dr. Novak, cell banking is not the most economical way to resuscitate genes.
“Conservators are fighting to save species, but we mightn’t save everything – the destruction is underway.”
“Getting ahead and banking things gives us the ability to do catering in the future,” he adds. “If we don’t, we will regret it later,” he continues.
Gabby Drake, a veterinarian at Chester Zoo, prepares to take tissue from a dead jaguar for the biobank
Biobanks risk sending the message that we don’t need to worry regarding saving species today “because we can freeze them for later”, says Professor Bill Sutherland, a conservation biologist at the university of Cambridge.
“And there’s the issue of prioritizing what gets stored,” he says. “It would be wonderful to get tissue from 20 snow leopards from 20 different places, but it would be really difficult.”
Instead, Nature’s Safe works closely with European zoos, including Chester Zoo.
When an animal needs to be put to sleep or dies unexpectedly, zoo veterinarians collect tissue for the bank.
“It’s a ray of light,” says Tullis Matson. “This animal dying actually gives some hope for the future of this species, because we can freeze these genes,” he adds.
Although banking what is available is not a perfect approach, it has enabled Nature’s Safe to obtain samples of species such as the mountain frog, a critically endangered amphibian that has nearly been eliminated by a fungal disease.
She also obtained tissue from a Javan green magpie, a bird driven to the brink of extinction by the demand of the wild bird trade. (These almost garishly beautiful birds have remarkable and highly sought-following mimicry skills).
Dr Sue Walker, chief scientist at Chester Zoo, says it’s regarding saving as much genetic material as possible. “If we don’t when the animal disappears, we’ve lost it,” she says.
Photo credit, Chester Zoo
The Javan green magpie has been pushed to the brink of extinction by the caged bird trade
Earlier this year in Chester, Goshi, a nine-year-old female jaguar, was found dead in her enclosure. Vet Gabby Drake carefully cut off the big cat’s left ear, put it in a cold pack and sent it to Nature’s Safe, before sending Goshi for an autopsy.
“Jaguars are not the most endangered big cats, but they are in decline and face the same human pressures as other large predators,” says Gabby.
“She was a fairly young animal and she never had any babies, unfortunately. It’s sad, but it’s good to know that her living tissue will endure.”
Photo credit, Chester Zoo
Today, a few pea-sized pieces of Goshi’s velvety black ear — cleaned, prepped, and bathed in a protective nutrient solution — sits in a biodiversity-growing liquid nitrogen box.
Tullis Matson is optimistic regarding what science may allow in the future. “With gene editing technology, we might even be able to create new genetic diversity,” he speculates.
Looking at the now solitary male jaguar patrolling his enclosure, Chester Zoo’s Dr Sue Walker says it may be ‘decades before we have the technology to do what we want to do with these samples.
His hope, and that of most conservationists, is that using frozen cells from long-dead animals will never be necessary.
“But if we don’t collect them, then those genetic elements are lost forever,” she says. “We will have lost all this unique biodiversity.”