In a world being rewritten by a profoundly changing climate and environmental devastation, “biobanking” efforts may hold a key to species survival.
Biobanking is the practice of storing living genetic material, such as living cells, or sperm and ova. While it is most often associated with human material, San Diego’s Frozen Zoo was the world’s first large-scale, systematic cryogenic biological bank dedicated to preserving living cells and reproductive material from wildlife.
It remains the largest and most diverse collection of its kind. Today, living cell lines from more than 11,500 individual animals representing 1,337 species are banked at the San Diego Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo, the organization said.
Now, it’s expanding its vision.
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, alongside the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission and the Animal Biobanking for Conservation Specialist Group, has established the Center for Species Survival’s Biodiversity Biobanking in order to aid species resilience.
The collection includes living cells, embryos, and gametes from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, all stored in liquid nitrogen at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also cryopreserving kelp, oaks and other species that are traditionally very difficult to biobank.
“Species are vanishing at astonishing rates,” said Megan Owen, Ph.D., vice president of wildlife conservation science at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, in a statement.
She said that by some estimates, the planet loses more than a hundred species every day due to mounting environmental and human-driven pressures.
“While we are advancing technologies to safeguard biodiversity, we recognize that nature itself remains the most powerful biodiversity bank there is — and that biobanking is a unique tool we must develop and use to protect life on Earth, complementing habitat and species protections.”
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, alongside the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission and the Animal Biobanking for Conservation Specialist Group, has now established the Center for Species Survival’s Biodiversity Biobanking in order to aid species resilience.
The collection includes living cells, embryos, and gametes from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, all stored in liquid nitrogen at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also cryopreserving kelp, oaks and other species that are traditionally very difficult to biobank.
The Frozen Zoo was the creation of German-American pathologist and animal conservationist Kurt Benirschke, M.D., who passed away in 2018. At the time that he created it, there was no technology to use the samples beyond basic research.
It is one of six unique biobanking collections that make up the SDZWA’s Wildlife Biodiversity Bank.
Other collections include the Tissue and DNA Bank, Native Plant Gene Bank, Pathology Archive, Clinical Repository, and Wildlife Artifacts in order to preserve biodiversity.
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