Expansionary Institute

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

Noah's New Ark
                 The imminent birth of a cloned gaur signals a new approach to
                 preservation
                 BY MARYANN BIRD/LONDON


                 Noah's Ark has set sail again, crossing stormy scientific
                waters and buffeted by winds of controversy. Unlike the Old
                 Testament vessel, however, today's metaphorical ark is not
                 carrying threatened animals two by two to safety. Rather, if
                 it lives up to its billing, it could produce potentially
                 unlimited numbers of endangered creatures.

                 In the updated story, though, Noah is not the skipper of the
                 rescue project. Instead, it's the name given in advance to the
                 clone of a dead gaur, an endangered wild ox found in India,
                 Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. The new Noah is expected to be
                 born any day now to Bessie, a cow living on a farm near Sioux
                 City, Iowa. Cows have given birth to gaurs before, but this is
                 the first time that one animal species is acting as surrogate
                 mother to a clone--an exact genetic duplicate--of a different
                 species. "The gaur is developing well," says Emily Poe, a
                 spokeswoman for Advanced Cell Technologies. A small
                 biotechnology company based in Worcester, Mass., ACT is using
                 a novel cross-species nuclear-transfer technique that could
                 usher in what it sees as a new era in conservation.
                 Bessie's ultrasound tests may look good, but is the concept
                 itself a sound one? Robert Lanza, ACT's vice president of
                 medical and scientific development, says the technique is not
                 a panacea but "presents exciting possibilities" that may help
                 rescue endangered species and perhaps even reverse
                 extinctions. Other scientists aren't so sure. They argue that
                 such high-tech approaches are unlikely to make a significant
                 contribution to the support of vulnerable species, especially
                 if their habitats have been destroyed.

                 Still, if Bessie's little gaur is delivered safely, the birth
                 will come as a boost to many biologists in the U.S. and Europe
                 who are engaged in a range of "assisted reproduction"
                 conservation strategies. These include artificial insemination
                 and in vitro fertilization. In particular, though, Noah's
                 arrival will hearten the scientists at ACT, who recently
                 signed a deal with Spanish officials to attempt to clone the
                 bucardo, an extinct mountain goat native to the Pyrenees. The
                 last bucardo died a year ago, struck by a falling tree in its
                 final habitat, northern Spain's Ordesa National Park.
                 Scientists had already preserved a quantity of its cells, and
                 ACT hopes to transfer them into other goats' eggs, perhaps
                 later this year.

                 The cloning technique used with Bessie--the only cow in the
                 experiment to carry an embryo into late pregnancy--is a
                 variation of the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the
                 world's first cloned mammal. A needle is jabbed through an
                 egg's protective layer and used to remove the egg's nucleus,
                 containing most of a cell's genetic material. A second needle
                 is used to inject a whole cell under the egg's outer layer. To
                 complete the process, an electrical current fuses the new cell
                 to the egg. The embryo starts to divide until, within days,
                 the mass of cells grows to about 100 and is big enough to be
                 implanted in the surrogate mother's uterus.

                 The creation of Noah began with the fusing of skin cells from
                 a male gaur and 692 cow eggs. Just 81 grew into blastocysts
                 (clumps of cells suitable for implantation), and 42 of those
                 were inserted into 32 cows, of which eight became pregnant.
                 Two of the fetuses were later removed for study, while five
                 cows sustained spontaneous abortions. Only Bessie and Noah are
                 left.

                 As ACT scientists await the clone's birth, other wildlife
                 researchers express doubts about the project's conservation
                 claims and think the wrong message is being sent. "We do not
                 believe that cloning has any relevance to the routine
                 management and conservation of endangered species," says David
                 Wildt, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's
                 Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va. Instead,
                 Wildt favors low-tech methods, like the artificial
                 insemination used to breed the endangered black-footed ferret,
                 which is now being reintroduced to the American West. "Our
                 laboratory works all over the world with the rarest of
                 species," he says, "and not once have I ever heard a real
                 wildlife manager or wildlife scientist say, 'Gee, we must
                 attempt to save this species using cloning.'"

                 To William Holt, a research fellow at the Institute of Zoology
                 in London, the best approach is to learn more about species'
                 reproductive systems and the social conditions that can make
                 animals want to breed naturally. "If you know those things,
                 you can improve success rates a lot without doing anything
                 invasive." Where cloning technology may be useful, Holt
                 allows, is "where the species is down to 50 or so. You could
                 sample cells from all of them. You could re-create all of
                 these 50 individuals. You've still got the genetic variability
                 that is important." Failing to do so, he suggests, could
                 result in populations that lack the genetic diversity to fight
                 off disease, setting the creatures up for a second extinction.
                 Suitable habitats are also necessary. "You've got to ask, Are
                 we helping these animals into the future?"

Helping animals into the future is a priority for the world's
                 wildlife researchers as an ever growing number of species
                 become imperiled each year. Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at the
                 San Diego Zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species,
                 is the driving force behind a 25-year effort to assemble a
                 bank of frozen dna, eggs and sperm from endangered species.
                 Under his direction, the frozen zoo now has living cells from
                 5,400 animals spanning more than 400 species and subspecies,
                 cultured and frozen in liquid nitrogen.

                 One missing creature is often on Ryder's mind. "Could you take
                 a cell from a Morro Bay kangaroo rat and bring it back, and
                 would it be the same?" he asks. "There are a lot of questions,
                 but we don't have that option now because nobody saved the
                 cells" while lab work was being conducted on the rodent in the
                 1970s. "The future will want to know about these species, and
                 the lingua franca of biology is increasingly going to be
                 genomic information. If nobody saves the dna of these samples,
                 it's going to be a very fragmented picture." There is also a
                 present-day, practical side. By providing vital clues to the
                 mingling of subspecies and the types of environment they
                 require, genetic data can help zoologists care for endangered
                 animals in captivity.

                 Using science to save vanishing species is becoming a global
                 pursuit. Robert Mauget and colleagues at France's National
                 Museum of Natural History, which includes four zoo parks,
                 recently became the first to produce deer embryos in vitro.
                 The technique--incorporating frozen semen and oocytes, or
                 developing egg cells--is expected to be applied later this
                 year to rare and endangered deer species, with more common
                 types acting as surrogate mothers. The French are also talking
                 with colleagues in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan about how they
                 may help rebuild populations of Bactrian (Bukharian) deer in
                 Central Asia. "Basically, we're hoping to give them our
                 recipe," says Mauget.

                 At Austria's Salzburg Zoo, scientists are developing a recipe
                 they hope will lead to the first production of white rhinos
                 through artificial insemination. Franz Schwarzenberger of
                 Vienna's University of Veterinary Medicine believes success
                 with the tricky technique could help save even more endangered
                 rhino species, such as the northern white. "It may be possible
                 to collect semen in the wild and inseminate animals in
                 captivity," he says. "This kind of assisted reproduction
                 offers us a chance to improve the gene pool of the captive
                 population without taking resources from the wild."

                 After years of watching one species after another become
                 extinct, researchers are sounding optimistic. "We don't have
                 the right to do nothing," says Mauget, who predicts that
                 interzoo exchanges of sperm, oocytes and embryos will develop
                 rapidly. "Instead of shipping our animals from one zoo to
                 another, we'll be sending sperm to the four corners of the
                 earth." Meanwhile, in a corner of Iowa, another kind of
                 delivery is awaited.

                 REPORTED BY EDWARD BARNES/NEW YORK, DAN CRAY/LOS ANGELES, TALA
                 SKARI/PARIS AND JANE WALKER/MADRID
                 CANDIDATES FOR CLONING?

                 Gaurs are not the only endangered species that could use a
                 high-tech hand
                 GIANT PANDA WHITE RHINOCEROS BACTRIAN DEER

Time: JANUARY 8, 2001 VOL. 157 NO. 1
                 SCIENCE