United States – Scientists at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) have successfully cloned two endangered rodent species.
Scientists hope that this process will help the black-footed ferrets reproduce when they reach full maturity later this year.
Black-footed ferrets are one of the rarest land mammals in North America and were previously thought to be extinct, until a small group of them was discovered in 1981 in Wyoming.
The cloned ferret duo, named Antonia and Noreen, might be a much-needed solution to the survival of this species, whose numbers have dwindled to just 300 in the wild.
Conservationists soon captured the wild ferrets and launched the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program, breeding the rare mammals in captivity to increase their numbers.
The cloning process is similar to that used on Dolly the sheep in 1996, which required scientists to inject DNA cells from a donor animal into an egg cell.
“Antonia” and “Norine” were the second and third black-footed ferrets to be cloned last May, following “Elizabeth Ann” in 2021.
Noreen was born at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado, while Antonia resides at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia. Both were cloned from the same genetic material as Elizabeth Ann.
Noreen and Antonia were cloned based on frozen tissue samples collected in 1988 from a female ferret named Willa, which was stored at the Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo in San Diego.
The scientists cloned the animals by taking one of Wella’s cells and injecting it into an egg from a pet ferret.
This process is called somatic cell cloning which removes tissue DNA from a donor cell and replaces the DNA already present in the egg cell.
From there, scientists implant the modified egg cell into a surrogate of the same species, and when it is born, it is genetically identical to the DNA of the donor it came from.
Willa did not have any living descendants, so scientists hoped that by freezing some of her cells, they might reproduce animals in the future.
Scientists saved the samples because they contained three times more unique genetic variations than the current collection, making them ideal for cloning.
Elizabeth Ann, a female ferret born in 2020, was the first clone to use Wella genes. But Elizabeth Ann, who lives at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in northern Colorado, did not have grandchildren either. Scientists working with Elizabeth Ann said she was not interested in any potential mates.
In addition to the fact that she “never liked males,” CBS News reported that scientists were also unable to reproduce Elizabeth Ann due to a problem with her reproductive organs that was not caused by her cloning.
Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that two more black-footed ferrets have been successfully cloned in an effort to save the endangered species.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has not announced plans to clone more of these black-footed rodents, saying it is focused on ensuring the health of “Antonia” and “Norine.”
Source: Daily Mail
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2024-04-20 12:58:47
