Elizabeth Ann just became a triplet—at three years old.
This black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes)—the first endangered species in the U.S. to ever be successfully cloned—was joined late last year by her genetically identical baby sisters Antonia and Noreen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced Wednesday. All three come from the same cryogenically preserved cell line, obtained from a ferret named Willa, who lived in Wyoming in the 1980s.
As climate change, habitat loss and dwindling food supplies bring ever more endangered species “crashing to the brink,” a successful cloning such as this is a serious game changer, says Ben Novak, head of de-extinction efforts at Revive & Restore, a nonprofit outfit that applies biotechnology to conservation.
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Novak’s organization, along with ViaGen Pets & Equine and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, is now teaming up with the FWS on a major project to cryogenically store tissue from every endangered species in the U.S., “just in case,” says Seth Willey, a FWS deputy assistant regional director who heads the project’s pilot phase. “It’s an insurance policy against future loss of biodiversity in the wild.”
It all began back in 1981 when scientists in Wyoming found and captured 18 black-footed ferrets—a species that had been thought to be extinct. A few of these animals bred in captivity, and their descendants were freed into the wild in an attempt to keep the species going. But scientists, worried about a future lack of genetic diversity in the fragile population, froze cells from Willa and one male, both of which had not bred naturally. The researchers wanted to bank this genetic material for potential later use to spice…
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