Successfully Cloned Extinct Animals
Elizabeth Ann is the first cloned black-footed ferret and first-ever cloned U.S. endangered species, at 50-days old on Jan. 29, 2021.U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.
The slinky predator named Elizabeth Ann, born Dec. 10 and announced Thursday, is cute as a button. But watch out — unlike the domestic ferret foster mom who carried her into the world, she’s wild at heart.
Scientists Clone Black Footed Ferret, First For Endangered Us Species
“You might have been handling a black-footed ferret kit and then they try to take your finger off the next day, ” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret recovery coordinator Pete Gober said Thursday. “She’s holding her own.”
Elizabeth Ann was born and is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret breeding facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. She’s a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988 and whose remains were frozen in the early days of DNA technology.
Cloning eventually could bring back extinct species such as the passenger pigeon. For now, the technique holds promise for helping endangered species including a Mongolian wild horse that was cloned and last summer born at a Texas facility.
Back From The Dead
“Biotechnology and genomic data can really make a difference on the ground with conservation efforts, ” said Ben Novak, lead scientist with Revive & Restore, a biotechnology-focused conservation nonprofit that coordinated the ferret and horse clonings.
Black-footed ferrets are a type of weasel easily recognized by dark eye markings resembling a robber’s mask. Charismatic and nocturnal, they feed exclusively on prairie dogs while living in the midst of the rodents’ sometimes vast burrow colonies.
Even before cloning, black-footed ferrets were a conservation success story. They were thought extinct — victims of habitat loss as ranchers shot and poisoned off prairie dog colonies that made rangelands less suitable for cattle — until a ranch dog named Shep brought a dead one home in Wyoming in 1981.
The Real Life Jurassic Park: Inside Plans To Bring Back Dodos, Tasmanian Tigers And Woolly Mammoths
Scientists gathered the remaining population for a captive breeding program that has released thousands of ferrets at dozens of sites in the western U.S., Canada and Mexico since the 1990s.
Lack of genetic diversity presents an ongoing risk. All ferrets reintroduced so far are the descendants of just seven closely related animals — genetic similarity that makes today’s ferrets potentially susceptible to intestinal parasites and diseases such as sylvatic plague.
Willa could have passed along her genes the usual way, too, but a male born to her named Cody “didn’t do his job” and her lineage died out, said Gober.
World's 1st Cloned Wild Arctic Wolf Makes Debut, Pioneering Conservation Of Endangered Wildlife Through Cloning Tech
When Willa died, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department sent her tissues to a “frozen zoo” run by San Diego Zoo Global that maintains cells from more than 1, 100 species and subspecies worldwide. Eventually scientists may be able to modify those genes to help cloned animals survive.
“With these cloning techniques, you can basically freeze time and regenerate those cells, ” Gober said. “We’re far from it now as far as tinkering with the genome to confer any genetic resistance, but that’s a possibility in the future.”
Cloning makes a new plant or animal by copying the genes of an existing animal. Texas-based Viagen, a company that clones pet cats for $35, 000 and dogs for $50, 000, cloned a Przewalski’s horse, a wild horse species from Mongolia born last summer.
The Future Of Cloning: From Dolly The Sheep To Elizabeth Ann
Viagen also cloned Willa through coordination by Revive & Restore, a wildlife conservation organization focused on biotechnology. Besides cloning, the nonprofit in Sausalito, California, promotes genetic research into imperiled life forms ranging from sea stars to jaguars.
“How can we actually apply some of those advances in science for conservation? Because conservation needs more tools in the toolbox. That’s our whole motivation. Cloning is just one of the tools, ” said Revive & Restore co-founder and executive director Ryan Phelan.
Elizabeth Ann was born to a tame domestic ferret, which avoided putting a rare black-footed ferret at risk. Two unrelated domestic ferrets also were born by cesarian section; a second clone didn’t survive.
Scientists Say They Can Bring Extinct Species Back. But Should They?
Elizabeth Ann and future clones of Willa will form a new line of black-footed ferrets that will remain in Fort Collins for study. There currently are no plans to release them into the wild, said Gober.
Novak, the lead scientist at Revive & Restore, calls himself the group’s “passenger pigeon guy” for his work to someday bring back the once common bird that has been extinct for over a century. Cloning birds is considered far more challenging than mammals because of their eggs, yet the group’s projects even include trying to bring back a woolly mammoth, a creature extinct for thousands of years.
The seven-year effort to clone a black-footed ferret was far less theoretical, he said, and shows how biotechnology can help conservation now. In December, Novak loaded up a camper and drove to Fort Collins with his family to see the results firsthand.The Pyrean ibex, also known as the bouquetin, was the first and only animal to date to have survived de-extinction past birth.
This Animal Went Extinct Twice
De-extinction (also known as resurrection biology, or species revivalism) is the process of gerating an organism that either resembles or is an extinct species.
There are several ways to carry out the process of de-extinction. Cloning is the most widely proposed method, although gome editing and selective breeding have also be considered. Similar techniques have be applied to certain dangered species, in hopes to boost their getic diversity. The only method of the three that would provide an animal with the same getic idtity is cloning.
Pictured above is the process used to clone the Pyrean ibex. The tissue culture was tak from the last living, female Pyrean ibex named Celia. The egg was tak from a goat (Capra hircus) and the nucleus removed to sure the offspring was purely Pyrean ibex. The egg was implanted into a surrogate goat mother for developmt.
The History Of Cloning
Cloning is a commonly suggested method for the pottial restoration of an extinct species. It can be done by extracting the nucleus from a preserved cell from the extinct species and swapping it into an egg, without a nucleus, of that species' nearest living relative.
The egg can th be inserted into a host from the extinct species' nearest living relative. It is important to note that this method can only be used wh a preserved cell is available, meaning it would be most feasible for rectly extinct species.
One of the most well known clones is Dolly the sheep. Dolly was born in the mid 1990s and lived normally until the abrupt midlife onset of health complications resembling premature aging, that led to her death.
Ferret Cloned From Frozen Cells Could Improve Prospects For Endangered Species
Gome editing has be rapidly advancing with the help of the CRISPR/Cas systems, particularly CRISPR/Cas9. The CRISPR/Cas9 system was originally discovered as part of the bacterial immune system.
Viral DNA that was injected into the bacterium became incorporated into the bacterial chromosome at specific regions. These regions are called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, otherwise known as CRISPR. Since the viral DNA is within the chromosome, it gets transcribed into RNA. Once this occurs, the Cas9 binds to the RNA. Cas9 can recognize the foreign insert and cleaves it.
By using cells from a closely related species to the extinct species, gome editing can play a role in the de-extinction process. Germ cells may be edited directly, so that the egg and sperm produced by the extant part species will produce offspring of the extinct species, or somatic cells may be edited and transferred via somatic cell nuclear transfer. The result is an animal which is not completely the extinct species, but rather a hybrid of the extinct species and the closely related, non-extinct species. Because it is possible to sequce and assemble the gome of extinct organisms from highly degraded tissues, this technique ables scitists to pursue de-extinction in a wider array of species, including those for which no well-preserved remains exist.
Extinct Animal Cloning
However, the more degraded and old the tissue from the extinct species is, the more fragmted the resulting DNA will be, making gome assembly more challging.
Back breeding is a form of selective breeding. As opposed to breeding animals for a trait to advance the species in selective breeding, back breeding involves breeding animals for an ancestral characteristic that may not be se throughout the species as frequtly.
Back breeding is also a form of artificial selection by the deliberate selective breeding of domestic animals, in an attempt to achieve an animal breed with a photype that resembles a wild type ancestor, usually one that has gone extinct. Breeding back is not to be confused with dedomestication.
Elizabeth Ann, The First Cloned Ferret, Spurs Hope For Endangered U.s. Species
A natural process of de-extinction is iterative evolution. This occurs wh a species becomes extinct, but th after some time a differt species evolves into an almost idtical creature. For example, the Aldabra rail was a flightless bird that lived on the island of Aldabra. It had evolved some time in the past from the flighted white-throated rail, but became extinct about 136, 000 years ago due to an unknown evt that caused sea levels to rise. About 100, 000 years ago,
Posting Komentar untuk "Successfully Cloned Extinct Animals"