Hybrid hybrid embryos of white rhinoceros are created in the laboratory

REFERENCE | Photo taken from Voice of America

Hybrid embryos of the northern white rhinoceros extinguished after the recent death of the last male, and a related subspecies was created using Assisted reproduction technologies within a laboratory, according to a study published today in Nature Communications

The Advance Is the First Hybrid Embryo Created by In Vitro Fertilization That Reached the blastocyst stage with 5 or 6 days of development – with a complex cellular structure.

In addition, it is a success that could preserve the mammal, whose last male died last March, so now only two females survive in Kenya.

The project, led by Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Research Institute for Zoos and Wildlife in Germany, began with the collection of numerous oocytes – female germ cells mammalian specimens – both of which white rhinoceros species from the north and south – thanks to a device nearly two meters in length of transrectal implantation.

Shinya Yamanaka's winning Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012, which discovered that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent, has led to a new approach by combining "badisted reproduction techniques with the collection of oocytes, "said Hildebrandt at a press conference.

Scientists obtained thawed sperm from endangered male rhinoceroses and fertilized oocytes from the nearest subspecies, the southern target, by intracytoplasmic sperm injection

The resulting hybrid embryos were developed to the point of development. in the blastocyst stage and frozen for possible implantation in females. the southern subspecies in the future.

A next step will be moving to Kenya to collect the oocytes from the remaining two females from the north and create new blastocysts where the egg and sperm come from the same subspecies.

To successfully implement the process – moving frozen embryos to females – the team will have "a little more than a year", in the words of Hildebrandt, since the gestation of these mammals last "16 months".

While attempts by the scientific community in the past twenty years to preserve the northern white rhinoceros have failed, current embryos are presented as a new hope to preserve the species.

However, in order to reach a new self-sustaining population, experts generate new gametes. breeding cells – from stem cells. EFE

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