The Cloning Revolution, stage 2
The cloning revolution (part 2)Steve Connor, The Independent, 18 April 2008
Translation: Inopressa
Revolutionary cloning technology will be used in desperate attempts to save one of the rarest animals on Earth – the northern white rhinoceros, which is on the verge of extinction. There are only a few individuals of this species left in the wild.
British scientists are initiating an attempt to preserve the genes of a rhinoceros kept in captivity by using the technology of mixing its skin cells with the embryos of its close relative, the southern white rhinoceros, which is not in such danger. The resulting offspring will be "chimeras" with cells of both subspecies. Scientists hope that some of them will grow up and produce sperm and eggs of the northern white rhino and thereby replenish the shrinking gene pool.
If this groundbreaking experiment succeeds, biologists hope to apply this technology to a wide range of other endangered species whose numbers in the wild have seriously declined due to hunting and deprivation of their natural habitat.
Specialists from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh are jointly implementing this project with the help of environmental experts in this area, who warn that the days of the northern white rhino are numbered and only three or four individuals remain in the meadows of northeast Africa. Jan Wilmut, who led a group of scientists on cloning Dolly the sheep, is taking part in this research project. He stated that the new technology is more promising and practical than the cloning method he used in his famous breakthrough more than 10 years ago.
Professor Robert Millar, director of the Department of Reproductive Sciences at the Medical Research Council at the University of Edinburgh, who is leading the project, said: "Many African animals are on the verge of extinction. We want to protect their genomes, but you have to protect their habitat. This is one way to solve the problem, especially if the number of these animals in the world reaches such a low level. This is a technique that we should start using and put into circulation as insurance – according to laboratory studies, this is quite feasible."
Scientists intend to take small skin samples of several white rhinos kept in captivity, as well as animals temporarily captured in the wild, and transform them into embryonic cells using new genetic engineering technologies carefully tested on laboratory mice.
The technology involves changing several regulatory genes in order to "reprogram" adult skin cells back into an embryonic state, from which they can later develop into any specialized tissues of the body, including germ line cells that develop into sperm and eggs.
This week, in an interview with The Independent, one scientist warned that the technology of induced polypotent stem cells (iPSC) can be applied by independent specialists in in vitro fertilization even to infertile couples who applied to them, since this technology turned out to be very easy to use, showing only a few obvious side effects in experiments on mice.
Robert Lanza, head of the scientific sector of the American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts, also said that he is collaborating with Chinese scientists to use iPS cells on the example of a giant panda as part of an environmental program. "Technology can be of great value for the biology of environmental protection. In fact, we are working on using iPS cells to save endangered animals," Lanza said.
"We also have an agreement with the Chinese Giant Panda Breeding Group, engaged in breeding giant pandas, to work together to use reprogramming technologies to transform giant panda cells – skin samples or other tissues preserved by them – into iPS cells in order to save genes that otherwise will disappear forever from the face of the Earth," he added..
The Human Reproduction Department of the Medical Research Council is going to work closely with Edinburgh Zoo in the field of breeding technologies that could be used to preserve endangered species such as the African hyena dog, the Ethiopian wolf and the pygmy hippopotamus. A new organization called the Institute for Breeding Rare and Endangered African Mammals has been founded in the capital of Scotland, whose goal is to unite scientists and allow them to exchange experience and resources.
Paul de Sousa, a stem cell specialist at the University of Edinburgh, noted that all mammals seem to have the same genes that can be configured to reprogram skin cells to create iPS cells and that this technology can be applied to the northern white rhinoceros. "No one has done this before, but I'm sure it can be done. You group the cells of the embryo, and what you create will be the "chimera" of the rhinoceros," said Dr. de Sousa.
Environmental biology experts say that the problems associated with the use of tissues of endangered animals are limitless. "If it works, we have a long way to go... It will be very difficult," said Professor Will Holt from the Zoological Society of London.
referenceIf you look at the color of the skins of white and black rhinos, there will not be much difference in color – both of them are about the same gray color.
If we take into account that rhinos regularly take mud baths, then the color of individual animals in general will be associated with the color of the soil in the habitats of a particular specimen.
So why are they divided into white and black? The linguists' version is as follows: in the Old Dutch language there is a word wijd, it was it that migrated from the Boer colonizers to the Afrikaans language and there turned into weit, it sounds one in one like English white. Only wijd means wide, and white means white. Agree that it is more appropriate for such an animal to be wide than white. But it is also not worth taking this name literally, because black rhinos are very slightly inferior in size to white ones. The word "wide" was applied to the upper lip of this type of rhinoceros – it is short and flat, and in black it hangs over the mouth with a kind of proboscis.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru21.04.2008