Second Noah's Ark being built in a Petri dish
September 28, 1995
Web posted at: 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT)
From Tech Correspondent Lori Waffenschmidt
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (CNN) -- A modern-day Noah is building an ark. But this time it's not a boat. It's a breeding program to help save endangered species around the world. And the first animal on the list is the hunter's hartebeest, a tawny horned creature that's been called the most endangered animal of all.
The hunter's hartebeest is an African antelope that comes from
Kenya near the border of Somalia. There's only one of the animals
left in captivity, and none are known to be left in the wild.
It's a major concern for researchers like Duane Kraemer at Texas A&M University. He's working to save the hunter's hartebeest and other animals too, through advanced breeding programs like Project Noah's Ark. "Project Noah's Ark is an international effort to raise the resources necessary to be able to bank the genomes of wildlife species to provide a safety net in the event they become endangered or extinct," Kraemer says.
Researchers say that it might be possible to breed more
hartebeests from the one living at the Gladys Porter Zoo in
Brownsville, Texas. Bill Foxworth (158K .aiff sound or 158K .wav sound), who is also working on the
project at Texas A&M, says that they hope to remove eggs from the
female and fertilize them with frozen sperm taken from male
hartebeests in the past.
"We hope to be able to produce embryos, transfer the embryos to a closely related species, and then have pregnancies from that," he says.
It's an intricate process. Scientists collect sperm from animals, then a technician prepares a straw of sperm for freezing. The sperm will be stored in liquid nitrogen until it's time for fertilization. It's possible to store thousands of specimens in beer keg-sized tanks. Eggs are collected as well. When it's time for fertilization, the thawed sperm meets the egg. The resulting embryos go into an incubator to mature.
After that, they're ready for in vitro fertilization, or the
embryos can be frozen until they can be implanted in an
appropriate host animal. The cryopreservation, or freezing
process, creates a sort of frozen zoo. It could be the key to the
future for many endangered species. A crucial step is finding out
which animals can serve as surrogates for different endangered
species.
Once the techniques are perfected, Kraemer hopes to establish mobile satellite labs all around the world. In the meantime, time is running out for one lonely hunter's hartebeest, standing on the brink of extinction.
(These sites are not necessarily endorsed by CNN Interactive.)
Copyright © 1995 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.