Frozen Zoo

Biotechnology forges ahead. Soon scientists will be able to generate great quantities of genomic data from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo—a cache of 50 years worth of cells saved from rare and endangered animals cryopreserved (at -320 degrees F). A new partnership formed between the Zoo and the gene-sequencing company Illumina looks to fast forward the process of sequencing the 11,500 cells lines of over 1,300 species.

It was Dr. Kurt Benirschke of UCSD who in 1975 began collecting living cells from threatened animals and preserving them. Why? He was not sure but kept collecting, creating and becoming the first director of research of what is now the Frozen Zoo. The collection is becoming more and more important as our animals vanish. Five hundred species have been declared extinct in the past 100 years with some 50-150 lost in just the last 10 years. Many factors contribute to the culling of species including climate changed habitats, sea level rise and human actions. One recent case: in 2011 the last West Africa black rhinoceros, victims of poaching, died. There are no more.

While sequencing samples from the Frozen Zoo has been in place in the past (a bit of good news, to date two species have been successfully cloned from Zoo cells, the black-footed ferret and Przewalski’s horse), Illumina’s advanced DNA technology will accelerate the unlocking of new information that will be shared with the Zoo and Alliance partners world wide who are working on conservation challenges, evolutionary history, biodiversity preservation and medicine including how the genetic make up of a species does or does not contribute to its health or vulnerability to diseases for animal management preservation. Discoveries and revelations about the biological archive will be a guide to protecting species today, used to slow if not halt the rapid decline of animals existing in the wild now so they can be part of our future. And, perhaps, to  bring back extinct animals through cloning into our time. Jurassic Park?