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QuoteReplyTopic: The start of something...? Posted: 16-Feb-2009 at 06:41
Thought I'd give you the heads up on a recent development in the world of zoological science. We might be seeing the first sparks in something big in conservation and ecology.
An extinct animal has been resurrected by cloning for the first time—though the clone died minutes after birth.
Findings revealed January 23 in the journal Theriogenology
describe the use of frozen skin in 2003 to clone a bucardo, or Pyrenean
ibex, a subspecies of Spanish ibex that went extinct in 2000.
Scientists had cloned endangered species before, but not one that had officially died out.
Study co-author Jose Folch, of the Center for Agro-Nutrition Research and Technology in Aragon, Spain, said his team plans to try cloning another this ibex this year or next.
"We
are not especially disappointed for the death of the cloned newborn,"
Folch explained in an email, because such deaths in cloning experiments
are common.
"We will try to improve the technology in order to increase the efficiency of the cloning process."
But
David Wildt, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian's National
Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., who did not participate in this
study, warned that the successful cloning wouldn't be the first step in
creating a real-life Jurassic Park.
"The public should not leap
to the conclusion that we are on the edge of cloning woolly mammoths or
dinosaurs," he said. "Even if such embryos could be constructed, there
are no appropriate surrogate mothers for long-dead species."
Success and Setbacks
For
200 years, hunting had thinned the Pyrenean ibex population, and the
last living bucardo died in 2000, hit by a falling branch.
Using
frozen skin samples taken from this lone specimen in 1999, Folch and
his colleagues made clone embryos by inserting the bucardo's DNA into
domestic goat eggs emptied of their original genetic material.
The clones were then implanted into other subspecies of Spanish ibex or goat-ibex hybrids.
If
the environment in which an embryo develops is not a close match,
problems can occur during pregnancy. Of the 208 embryos the researchers
implanted, only seven goats became pregnant, and just one bucardo made
it to term.
The newborn bucardo died of respiratory failure
immediately after birth. Dissection revealed the animal had lung
abnormalities, although all its other organs looked normal.
Such
abnormalities are common in cloning—while a clone's DNA might be
identical to its donors', the act of shuffling DNA from one cell to
another can lead to irregularities during development.
A Step Forward
Smithsonian's Wildt called the work a "highly noteworthy scientific accomplishment."
"Offspring was produced from an animal well known to have suffered a recent extinction."
The bucardo story "is fascinating, because resurrection-by-cloning was the only option," Wildt said.
But
there are "vastly more effective and logical approaches" at conserving
virtually all living wildlife species, he added, including
re-establishing wild habitats, captive breeding by natural means, and
artificial insemination.
"The strong recovery of the
black-footed ferret and giant panda are two excellent examples" of
species that have come back from the brink thanks to conservation
efforts, Wildt said.
Reproductive
biologist Bill Holt at the Zoological Society of London, who did not
participate in this study, added that generating just one or a few
animals via cloning "will not necessarily produce a viable population
that would survive into the future."
Even if all resulting
offspring were healthy, he said, the fact that they only have a few
genetic samples of the bucardo to work with would mean there would be
no genetic diversity in the population, as in inbred groups.
"They would be very susceptible to disease or even climatic change and may not be able to survive for very long."
Quite fascinating. I have not kept pace with cloning since that sheep in the late nineties, (not that I was ever informed in the least) but this is certainly of note. Cloning extinct animals, perhaps we may yet construct a jurassic park. I'll admit my curiosity is piqued; it will be interesting to see how this progresses.
"War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."--Thomas Mann
It has been my dream since I was 4 to make JP a reality. At this stage, I still can't seem to figure out a plausible (let alone ethical) way of making it happen...but we'll see. I believe a major subject in the extinct animal cloning sphere is the Thylacine, of which they have specimens and DNA samples, possibly allowing us to clone. Best thing is, we have a juvenile specimen in formaldehyde (at least one) which means that unlike Dolly the sheep, the clone won't be nearing death as soon as it's born.
I need this to work. Seriously, I don't think I can live a full life without seeing a horribly arthritic manbearpigasaurous lying in a zoo somewhere!
Seriously though, this could be an amazing breakthrough if we could develop it fully. It could the genetic heritage of some of our most vulnerable species, which has to be a good thing.
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