![]() ![]() ![]() RELATED: Frozen Lab-Grown Embryos, a Hail Mary for the Northern White Rhino Using that preserved genetic material and the closely related southern white rhino as surrogates, BioRescue hopes to bring new northern white rhinos to term and restore the species to its natural habitat. However, BioRescue has been working for years to preserve the northern white rhino’s genetic heritage by gathering sperm and egg cells from the last remaining individuals. Even if she were, there aren’t any males. BioRescue is teaming up with Colossal, a biotech company in the U.S to use genetic engineering techniques to bring more genetic diversity to the embryos that BioRescue is creating.īoth living northern white rhinos are female and Naijin is no longer reproductively active. Thomas Hildebrandt, leader of the BioRescue Project and his team have been working to collect oocytes from Fatu, to create 29 viable embryos that will one day be implanted in surrogate southern white rhinos. They live at Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya. Both rhinos were born at the Czech ZOO Dvůr Králové but have been at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya since 2009.įatu in front and Najin in back are the last two known northern white rhinos alive on the planet. Today, the species is functionally extinct with only two living individuals, a mother/daughter pair named Naijin and Fatu. It's difficult to imagine a species closer to the brink than the northern white rhino. It’s great early on in our journey to de-extinction that we can be working on species preservation along that path,” Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal, told SYFY WIRE. “Fundamentally, we want all of our technologies to be leveraged for conservation. See, any tool that could be used to gather DNA, analyze genomes, and resurrect a woolly mammoth could feasibly also be used on living or more recently lost species. Announcing your intent to bring back animals that died out hundreds or thousands of years ago is the sort of thing that makes headlines and drives public interest rest assured, Colossal does intend to bring those animals back, but it’s not the company’s only motive. They have projects in progress to resurrect the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo. To date, Colossal’s efforts have focused on a few alluring but extinct species. The Northern White Rhino Is Functionally Extinct, But Maybe Not For Long The company has been developing de-extinction tools for years, and now it is partnering with BioRescue, a conservation organization determined to prevent the seemingly inevitable extinction of the northern white rhinoceros. What if, instead, InGen had a corporate conscience and used their undeniably impressive set of genetic tools to drive innovation in wildlife conservation? That’s more or less the operating philosophy of the real-world de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences. RELATED: De-Extinction Company Colossal Biosciences Commits to Resurrecting the Dodo Where will those animals live? How might they impact ecosystems which have changed in their absence? And what responsibility do we have to maintain and care for populations of animals who only exist through our direct intervention? Perhaps most importantly, why bring back something like the mammoth or the dodo (or a dinosaur) when so many living species are on the verge of collapse? Those are questions we can only assume never crossed the minds of John Hammond or anyone else at InGen. He was, however, very interested in funneling as many paying customers as possible through those oversized wooden doors, and that’s why he failed.Īny real world attempt at resurrecting extinct species must engage with the consequences of what that will entail. He wasn’t concerned with creating accurate representations of extinct species, recovering lost biodiversity, or responsibly maintaining the populations he had created. When Jurassic Park's John Hammond dreamed up his prehistoric theme park, filled with genetically crafted dinosaur-like creatures, he did so with an eye toward making a buck. ![]()
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