Melbourne scientist cryo-freeze 100 animal species
Scientists in Melbourne are using cryo-freezing to preserve the cells of 100 animal species. Its hoped the material could help rescue species on the brink of extinction.
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00:00 Yeah, exactly like you just said, we're so prone to these adverse weather events in Australia
00:06 now like bushfires, we've seen horrendous floods as well. And any one of those events
00:12 has the ability to wipe out an entire species or reduce the number of animals in a species
00:18 to a point where it really fast tracks them for extinction. And in Australia, we're home
00:23 to so many incredibly unique animals that you know, there was really a massive drive
00:28 to try and get this biobank set up so that we can go out now we can collect cells from
00:34 these really precious species, and then freeze them down to ensure that we don't have any
00:39 further species loss. And so how far you're up to now? We started this at the beginning
00:44 of the year, we've already collected 20 species in the biobank, which is fantastic. We currently
00:49 have funding to collect 100 species. But we're really hoping to leverage more funding to
00:54 really expand this because ultimately, we'd like to be able to collect material from every
00:59 Australian species to make sure that all the animals are protected. And can you name a
01:03 couple of the animals in particular that you're keen on helping? Yeah, we're working on a
01:08 couple of the small little mouse sized marsupials. So there's one called a fat tailed dunnart
01:13 and another one called an antichinus. And these are particularly susceptible to things
01:18 like bushfires, for example. And so we're really worried about these animals if there's
01:22 another major bushfire event that we could wipe these species out. And so by doing these
01:27 frozen cells from these animals, we'll have materials there that if that does happen,
01:31 we can actually go in, we can grow those cells and then we can recreate animals from them.
01:37 But the science isn't complete on that just yet, is it? For some animals? Yeah, so we've
01:43 been able to do it, you know, like cloning we did for Dolly the sheep, probably about
01:46 15, 20 years ago now. And we can do it for mice, we can do it for cattle and lots of
01:51 other species. Nobody's ever perfected those technologies for marsupials. We haven't had
01:56 the investment in that before. And so that's something my labs are working on is trying
02:00 to get that technology up and running. So that in the event that we do lose some of
02:04 these species, we do have that next stage of technology to actually turn that cell back
02:09 into that living animal. And you'd like to expand this beyond 100? Absolutely. We'd like
02:14 to collect everything really, you know, it's really the only way that we can properly safeguard
02:19 species from going extinct. And this is a bit of a change in the roles for museums?
02:25 Absolutely. So up until now, you know, museums have been really fantastic at collecting dead
02:30 specimens. So having lots of things, you know, where you've got skeletons or maybe skins
02:34 of animals. But this is actually now expanding that collection to actually have living cell
02:39 material so that we're not only keeping a record of what's happened in the past, but
02:44 we've got a living record so that we can make sure that we can actually bring all of that
02:48 diversity, all of those animals back in the event that any of those animals get lost in
02:53 the future.
02:54 And speaking of bringing animals back, how are you going with your passion for old Thylacinus
02:58 cynocephalus?
02:59 That's my favourite animal, right? So we've been working on the Tasmanian tiger resurrection
03:04 project for some time. And that's really, you know, shows you the kind of efforts that
03:08 you have to go to when you don't have frozen material. Obviously, there was nothing kept
03:13 from those animals that went extinct, you know, 88 years ago now. But it's fantastic,
03:17 you know, what we're providing here is a resource moving forward that nobody would ever have
03:21 to go down that pathway again. They'll already start with that living cell and they can just
03:25 turn it back into a whole living animal.
03:28 And do you think one day we will ever see a Tassie tiger again?
03:33 Yeah, I'm absolutely sure that we will at some point down the track have that animal
03:37 back.
03:38 How?
03:39 So the way that works is we don't have living cells from it. So you have to get living cells
03:44 from a close living relative. And then you have to turn those cells from that animal
03:50 into the Tasmanian tiger. And that's the bit that really takes a long time, a huge amount
03:54 of effort and a huge amount of cost associated with actually recreating that animal's cells.
04:00 But if you've got this frozen biobank, you've actually got those frozen cells already from
04:04 all of those really important species that we have in Australia. And so you don't have
04:08 to go through that whole re-engineering process.
04:11 Yeah. And so, yeah, I really feel your passion for all this, you're a really energetic guy.
04:17 When do you think that it's feasibly possible that we might see a Tassie tiger recreated?
04:26 I'm still pretty optimistic that within a decade we should be at the point that we can
04:31 recreate a Tasmanian tiger.
04:32 Wow. Amazing.
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