Fact or fiction: Can freezing animal cells help bring species back if they go extinct?
Frozen cell and tissue samples of flora and fauna are stored in cryopreservation vats at the NUS Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
SINGAPORE - Biobanking is the preservation of biological material from animals, plants and other living matter, often via storage at sub-zero temperatures.
Though initially used for clinical research, biobanks have recently been used as a tool for wildlife conservation.
Singapore has two conservation biobanks , which are overseen by the NUS Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and Mandai Wildlife Group.
Science fiction films like Jurassic Park allude to the potential of using the genetic information of extinct animals to bring them back to life. The Straits Times spoke with the museum's scientists to dispel some common myths about the technology.
Mr Marcus Chua is the museum's mammal curator, while Mr Foo Maosheng oversees its insect and cryogenic collections.
Myth: Freezing tissues and cells to below 0 deg C will prevent them from degrading.
Fact: Degradation stops only in samples kept at or below minus 130 deg C, with most cryopreservation vats set to minus 180 deg C or lower. Cellular activity ceases at these ultra-low temperatures, hence preserving the integrity of proteins, genetic material and other cell components stored within the vats.
If samples are stored in fridges set to minus 20 or minus 80 deg C, degradation is slowed, but will still occur.
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Myth: It does not matter how cells and tissues are frozen, as long as they are brought to sub-zero temperatures.
Fact: The freezing process can cause damage to the fragile biological tissue, for example, when ice crystals form, so care must be taken to ensure the genetic information remains intact.
The museum follows a rapid freezing protocol, where small tubes of samples are directly dipped into liquid nitrogen, then stored within cryopreservation vats. This method of flash freezing leads to much tinier ice crystals, minimising the damage to the cells' integrity.
For Mandai Wildlife Group, it also has to ensure that the stored cells remain viable, meaning that they can continue to grow and replicate after they are thawed. Key to this is preventing the formation of ice crystals, which could damage DNA or tissues.
Keeping samples at higher temperatures could cause ice crystals to form. Anti-freeze is also added during the freezing process to prevent ice crystals from forming.
More on this topic Coral frozen in time throws lifeline for Great Barrier Reef
Myth: The applications of biobanking are mostly for research.
Fact: Biobanking yields very tangible, real-world benefits in the realm of conservation.
One example is if you want to re-introduce a species that is extirpated – extinct in a geographical region – and are looking for a source of individuals to introduce. If you have a banked sample of the animal's cells or tissues, you can pull it out and find its genetic stock, then go out and find the closest related ones in the wild.
Myth: This technology can be used to bring extinct animals back to life, like in Jurassic Park.
Fact: This could be possible with further developments in stem cell technology, although researchers say it would require careful consideration of the ethics involved in biobanking.
Efforts to de-extinct species – or bring back animals no longer in existence today – are often costly, and consume money and resources which could otherwise be funnelled to other causes, such as conserving currently endangered species.
Whether or not organisms are indeed 'brought back to life' by de-extinction initiatives is also highly debated. An example of this was when Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences claimed they had 'resurrected' the dire wolf – by partially altering the genome of the modern grey wolf.
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