CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – Scientists have cloned the first endangered species in the United States, a black-legged ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died more than 30 years ago.
The sneaky predator named Elizabeth Ann, born on December 10 and announced Thursday, is cute as a button. But beware – unlike the adoptive domestic ferret mother who carried her into the world, she has a wild heart.
“You may be dealing with a kit for black-footed ferrets and they try to take your finger off the next day,” said Pete Gober, US Fish and Wildlife Service’s black-footed ferret recovery coordinator. “She’s holding on.”
Elizabeth Ann was born and raised in a black-footed ferret breeding site at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa, who died in 1988 and whose remains were frozen in the early days of DNA technology.
Cloning could eventually bring back extinct species, such as the passenger pigeon. For now, the technique is promising to help endangered species, including a Mongolian wild horse that was cloned and born last summer in a Texas facility.
“Biotechnology and genomic data can really make a difference in the field with conservation efforts,” said Ben Novak, chief scientist at Revive & Restore, a non-profit organization focused on biotechnology that coordinated the cloning of ferrets and horses.
Black-footed ferrets are a type of weasel easily recognized by dark-eyed marks that resemble a thief’s mask. Charismatic and nocturnal, they feed exclusively on prairie dogs, while living in the middle of the vast colonies of rodents’ dens.
Even before cloning, black-footed ferrets were a conservation success story. They were considered extinct – victims of habitat loss when farmers shot and poisoned colonies of prairie dogs that made pastures less suitable for cattle – until a farm dog named Shep brought a dead man home in Wyoming in 1981.
Scientists have brought the remaining population together for a captive breeding program that has released thousands of ferrets in dozens of locations in the western United States, Canada and Mexico since the 1990s.
The lack of genetic diversity prevents an ongoing risk. All ferrets reintroduced so far are descendants of just seven closely related animals – genetic similarity that makes today’s ferrets potentially susceptible to intestinal parasites and diseases like wild plague.
Willa could also have passed on her genes in the usual way, but a male born to her named Cody “did not do her job” and her bloodline died, Gober said.
When Willa died, the Wyoming Fish and Game Department sent her tissues to a “frozen zoo” run by the San Diego Zoo Global, which maintains cells from more than 1,100 species and subspecies worldwide. Eventually, scientists can modify these genes to help cloned animals survive.
“With these cloning techniques, you can basically freeze time and regenerate these cells,” said Gober. “We are far from that now, when it comes to moving the genome to check for any genetic resistance, but that is a possibility in the future.”
Cloning creates a new plant or animal by copying the genes of an existing animal. Texas-based Viagen, a company that clones pet cats for $ 35,000 and dogs for $ 50,000, cloned a horse from Przewalski, a species of Mongolian wild horse born last summer.
Similar to the black-footed ferret, the nearly 2,000 surviving Przewalski horses are descendants of just a dozen animals.
Viagen also cloned Willa through the coordination of Revive & Restore, a wildlife conservation organization focused on biotechnology. In addition to cloning, the non-profit organization in Sausalito, California, promotes genetic research into endangered life forms, from starfish to jaguars.
“How can we really apply some of these advances in science to conservation? Because conservation needs more tools in the toolbox. That is all of our motivation. Cloning is just one of the tools, ”said Revive & Restore co-founder and executive director, Ryan Phelan.
Elizabeth Ann was born the daughter of a domesticated ferret, who avoided putting a rare black-footed ferret at risk. Two unrelated domestic ferrets were also born by caesarean section; a second clone did not survive.
Elizabeth Ann and future Willa clones will form a new line of black-footed ferrets that will remain at Fort Collins for study. There are currently no plans to release them into the wild, Gober said.
Novak, the chief scientist at Revive & Restore, calls himself the group’s “passenger pigeon guy” for his work to one day bring back the bird that was once common and has been extinct for over a century. Cloning birds is considered much more challenging than mammals because of their eggs, but the group’s projects even include trying to bring back a hairy mammoth, a creature that has been extinct for thousands of years.
The seven-year effort to clone a black-footed ferret was much less theoretical, he said, and shows how biotechnology can help conservation now. In December, Novak loaded a trailer and drove to Fort Collins with his family to see the results first hand.
“I absolutely needed to see our beautiful clone in person,” said Novak. “There is nothing more incredible than that.”
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