Jew World Order

The death of the world’s most famous tortoise should be a wake-up call to freeze tissue from endangered species

WHEN I heard the sad news of Lonesome George’s death, my first thought was for his fibroblasts. In 2006, I wrote a book on this singular giant tortoise, the last of his kind from the Galapagos island of Pinta. “There are, as yet, no cells from Lonesome George in a freezer,” I wrote as I explored the technical and ethical hurdles to cloning this one-of-a-kind animal. I thought – naively, I now realise – that my observation might nudge someone to pop a sliver of his skin into liquid nitrogen. At the time of his death last month this had not happened.

Since the late 1970s, the Institute for Conservation Research at San Diego Zoo in California has been doing exactly this for other animals. Its Frozen Zoo contains cell cultures from more than 800 species. This, in turn, has spawned the Frozen Ark, an international consortium of like-minded institutions with a further 100 or so species.

The fact that cells from a tortoise widely known as the world’s rarest animal are not in any of them should be a wake-up call. For the most critically endangered species there should, I believe, be far more effort to preserve viable cell cultures from as many different individuals as possible. Starting now.

This is not because I have given up on the more traditional methods of conservation, but because putting cells on ice is technically straightforward, relatively cheap and preserves so much more than an inert specimen of DNA.

At its most basic, this can mean freezing sperm cells for artificial insemination. Egg cells can also be preserved in their hundreds of thousands by collecting ovarian tissue from reproductively active females that die in captivity and dunking it in liquid nitrogen. Combine the two and, for mammals at least, you get embryos that can be implanted into surrogate mothers, perhaps even from a different species.

Another option is to take a skin sample, culture cells called fibroblasts and freeze them. This is just as easy and, in many ways, more valuable.

The most obvious application is reproductive cloning. A nucleus extracted from such cells could be transferred to an egg cell emptied of its own DNA to create an embryo and ultimately to bring new life into the world.

For Lonesome George’s subspecies, artificial insemination and cloning would have been complicated by a lack of females to supply eggs. But banking skin from endangered species is about far more than reproductive cloning.

Once thawed and given the right nutrients, fibroblasts will readily divide. With a bit of persuasion they can be transformed into pluripotent stem cells capable of developing into all manner of tissues, from bone to blood to brain. In a future where stem cells are routinely used to treat disease, this could help to prolong or improve the quality of life of endangered species in captivity. Before too long it will probably be possible to use stem cells to generate sperm and eggs, with obvious benefits for assisted reproduction – even for a lone survivor like Lonesome George.

That is not to say we should clone endangered animals. For many people – myself included – cloning raises all manner of very real cultural and ethical concerns. But none of these legitimate reservations should stop us from banking as many cells as possible as a matter of urgency, just in case.

One of the oft-heard arguments against reproductive cloning is that humans should not be interfering with nature or “playing god”. When it comes to endangered species, I am not persuaded. For the past few millennia, and particularly the past century, humans have been the driving force behind the overwhelming majority of species’ extinctions. In other words, we have already been very busy playing god.

In view of the ongoing destruction caused by rampant deforestation, the introduction of alien species and climate change – to name but a few of the forces we are unleashing on the planet – the idea that we might deny future generations the opportunity to perform a small act of creation through cloning seems woefully short-sighted.

There is another reason why ethical concerns over cloning should not get in the way of banking cells from endangered species: the no end of biological and technical challenges to overcome before reproductive cloning can ever become commonplace. Mercifully, this means the decision to clone or not to clone is not one that needs to be taken right now. It would be arrogant in the extreme to anticipate how future generations will view this technology. The option to clone is, quite frankly, the very least we can give them.

Sad though it is to admit, it probably won’t be long before we have to use reproductive cloning to save some of the world’s most endangered species from extinction. For those surviving only in captivity, continued existence may depend on using banked cell lines to introduce some long-lost and much-needed genetic diversity into the mix.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Have your say

Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.

Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article

Subscribe now to comment.

Flabbergasted

Mon Jul 16 14:08:53 BST 2012 by orion

I am just flabbergasted that this was not done. One of my first thoughts after hearing of the Tortoise’s demise was–they must have harvested and stored terrific amounts of sperm and other cells from poor George over the years.

This Makes The Martian Metric To King’s Inches Mix Up Look Forgivable

Tue Jul 17 04:28:38 BST 2012 by Gary Murphy

Science, as well as everyone else, knew that Lonesome George was the end of the line. If no one took a tissue sample from George and preserved it, then I see no hope for Earth and global warming.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the “Report” link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.