Harvesting small tissues samples from living Snow leopards, Verma Rajneesh, a PhD student at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia has managed to produce embryonic stem-like cells that just might allow for scientists to artificially grow copies of the endangered species in a laboratory.
“Once embryonic stem-like cells are created, they can be use as a donor cell to increase the efficiency of cloning or can be matured into eggs or sperm – making them essential building blocks for assisted reproductive technologies,” Verma tells Study Melbourne.
In other words, the two components thought key to producing new offspring of an endangered animal -- a fertile mother and father of the same species -- may not be so necessary after all.
Personally I don’t like the idea of cloning, not because scientists act as god while creating life but it’s bad for the one who is being cloned. Fine. We may not need a mother & father to produce an offspring & it sounds cool that humans can actually save species from extinction by creating clones but still I think it would be lot a better to save all those species that originally exist. Concrete steps ought to be taken to protect them from humans who have already caused so much mess.
Anyhow, we wish Mr. Verma good luck!
Source:
Lab-Grown Clones could save species from extinction
“Once embryonic stem-like cells are created, they can be use as a donor cell to increase the efficiency of cloning or can be matured into eggs or sperm – making them essential building blocks for assisted reproductive technologies,” Verma tells Study Melbourne.
In other words, the two components thought key to producing new offspring of an endangered animal -- a fertile mother and father of the same species -- may not be so necessary after all.
Personally I don’t like the idea of cloning, not because scientists act as god while creating life but it’s bad for the one who is being cloned. Fine. We may not need a mother & father to produce an offspring & it sounds cool that humans can actually save species from extinction by creating clones but still I think it would be lot a better to save all those species that originally exist. Concrete steps ought to be taken to protect them from humans who have already caused so much mess.
Anyhow, we wish Mr. Verma good luck!
Source:
Lab-Grown Clones could save species from extinction
