We have enough genetic material to bring back the northern white rhino, but doing so won’t be easy
left on the planet, but the species may be able to recover from the brink of extinction using frozen skin cells from deceased rhinos.) has rested on the last surviving members of the subspecies: Fatu and Najin, an infertile mother-daughter pair. But because neither can carry a pregnancy, experts are turning to genetic and reproductive innovation.
That led researchers at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in California to look at skin cells taken from 12 different northern white rhinos that are stored in their Frozen Zoo, a repository of genetic material from more than a thousand different species.
They found that it would be possible to restore the population of northern white rhinos over multiple generations – no Fatu and Najin needed. “The beauty of having this consistent resource of genomes in the Frozen Zoo is that we can continually pull new individuals out and reintroduce them into the population,” saysTheir model revealed that, after 10 generations, the northern white rhinos in these simulations were not inbred – instead, they were a healthy, genetically diverse bunch.
But discovering that northern white rhinos are not genetically doomed is only part of the challenge. Researchers would still need to. There is also no guarantee that southern white rhino surrogates can successfully carry the embryos of the northern white rhinos. Another way forward is cloning: the banked cell lines could be used to create a genetic copy of the deceased animals.at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Ohio.
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