How are scientists cryopreserving endangered animal species?
The effects of climate change have massively affected the animal kingdom – to the point that scientists are now freezing species in biobanks.
Europe’s largest biobank of living tissue, Nature's SAFE, has begun freezing skin cells of the world’s most endangered species using liquid nitrogen. These frozen cells are being stored for the future so that they can be thawed and used to establish pregnancies, in order to restore the species if it were to go extinct.
Tullis Matson, founder of Nature's SAFE says, 'It's not going to stop extinction, but it'll certainly help.'
What is the cryopreservation process? When an endangered animal dies, cells from the animal’s ovaries, ears or testicles are obtained and are cryopreserved at -196°C.
The biobank is using skin cells because of the presence of the connective tissue called fibroblast. These tissues are known to be critical in healing and repair in animal bodies. Once these skin cells are thawed and given necessary nutrients, they will easily be able to multiply.
Nature’s SAFE has begun working with European zoos such as Chester zoo in UK to obtain skin cells of endangered animals. Whenever an animal is put to sleep or dies, vets at the zoo extract their skin cells and send them to Nature’s SAFE.
To further understand how skin cells can be used to recover an animal species, see this:
Which all animals have been stored so far? Nature’s SAFE has been able to preserve more than 100 highly threatened animal species including the Eastern black rhino, mountain chicken frog, jaguar and Javan green magpie.
Recently, a nine-year-old female jaguar at the Chester zoo was preserved using the process. Goshi, the jaguar, unexpectedly died at the zoo and vet Gabby Drake sent the dead cat’s left ear to Nature’s SAFE for cryopreservation.
Dr Sue Walker of the Chester zoo says it might be 'decades until we have the technology to do what we want to do with these samples. But if we don't collect it, then those genetics are lost forever'.