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Extinct Pyrenean Ibex Cloned
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:32 PM
from the intrepid-endeavor dept.
from the intrepid-endeavor dept.
jamie points out a story in the Telegraph about a project to clone the Pyrenean Ibex (known also as bucardo), a species that went extinct in 2000. Before the last known member of the species died, scientists took tissue samples to begin a project to clone the animal. "Using techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, known as nuclear transfer, the researchers were able to transplant DNA from the tissue into eggs taken from domestic goats to create 439 embryos, of which 57 were implanted into surrogate females. " Now, for the first time, one of them has survived the gestation period, living for seven minutes after birth. One of the researchers said, "The delivered kid was genetically identical to the bucardo. In species such as bucardo, cloning is the only possibility to avoid its complete disappearance."
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7 minutes! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:7 minutes! (Score:5, Funny)
No, that is why they went extinct... the females wanted to much romance and mood music ;)
Parent
Re:7 minutes! (Score:5, Informative)
Because of the extreme rarity of the white tiger allele in the wild, the breeding pool is limited to the small number of white tigers in captivity, which additionally all descend from a common ancestor. Inbreeding between these tigers often leads to defects. Due to the high market value for white tigers, unscrupulous breeders will still inbreed white tigers to ensure the offspring also exhibit the recessive gene. Some animal rights activists have called for a halt to the breeding of white tigers altogether.
Breeding from a single very genetically similar pair results in a much higher than normal rate of genetic defects, but can still produce enough viable offspring to start the process going.
I think the general "you'd need 100 breeding couples to start a human colony" statement generally has an unspoken "unless you want 1 in 10 children to be born with serious congenital defects". It doesn't mean that the colony can't survive though.
Parent
Re:7 minutes! (Score:5, Informative)
Wellllll ... there's a substantial kernel of truth in there, but the reality is not as clearly cut as you (or your sources) make out. It's true that isolated breeding populations of very small size do tend to have problems with consanguinity and relatively high rates of expression of deleterious mutations, but on the flip side of that, the small population size means that the population can genetically drift much faster than a larger population can. So, if the small population "comes up with" new phenotypes (short hand for something more like "selects from randomly-presented combinations of established and mutated genes", but considerably longer) which are well adapted to their isolated environment, they can achieve local dominance rapidly.
How small those populations are ... is a very moot point, and almost certainly the numbers are different for different genera (since this process is a common route of speciation, it's pointless to talk at a species level).
An example - within living memory, the island of St.Kilda [wikipedia.org] (60-some km west of the western Hebrides) was abandoned by it's human population, with consanguinity being cited as one of their major concerns. The population at the time of evacuation was 36 people (though the population profile would have been abnormal, having lost many of it's younger members in recent years). We can take this as an estimate of somewhat below the minimum population size necessary for an isolated human population. In contrast, before World War I the population seems to have been more-or-less stable in the high 70s or low 80s. Granted this is not an entirely isolated population, but it does give an indication. Perhaps better or more numerous data is available from the more numerous small Pacific Ocean islands, but again they're not entirely isolated.
In contrast, a recent report (I don't have the reference with me, but it was quite widely reported) of an isolated wolf pack in southern Sweden showed that it was suffering severely from inbreeding with around 8 members. But in contrast the appearance of a single unrelated individual male wolf in the late 1990s (IIRC) practically reversed the long-term decline of the pack. This suggests that the viable minimum population size for canines may be as low as the dozens.
Excluding social factors, the number of pairings available in a population 'n' scales as (n^2-n)/4 ; if pairings are not lifelong ... well, you get the picture.
For the SF fan - it's never puzzled me why the "colony world" type of story sticks (more or less) to monogamous couples and nuclear families (it's a fictional device), I suspect that in a real-world scenario that couldn't be allowed. What sort of a solution would have to be brought up, I don't know. Maybe the women starting pregnancies alternately by natural means and by IVF "from the egg and sperm banks, at random". But I suspect that "something would have to be done" to get the population gene pool bigger, faster.
For the anthropologist ... there's a scenario about Australia (or any random non-African continent) being colonised by a single woman, pregnant with a male foetus, being blown on a raft/ boat/ flood debris raft across from Indonesia. Not impossible, but decidedly implausible. Individuals getting blown off course in small coast-hugger boats, landing on the Australia shore at intervals of less than (say) a decade, and eventually two of opposite sexes surviving for long enough to meet ... that seems much more credible. And a decade later, another human arrives, and a decade later, another arrives. Pretty soon, you've got a substantial colony (I make it less than a century to reach a population of about 30 adults even with some fairly pessimistic assumptions about mortality rates).
Parent
Pyrenean Ibex, bucardo. (Score:2, Funny)
A species recently dead. Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to clone the world's first extinct species. Pyrenean Ibex will be that species. Better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster.
Re:Pyrenean Ibex, bucardo. (Score:5, Funny)
> Better, stronger, faster.
Looking at its lifetime, we did a very very good job at the 'faster' part.
Parent
HUMANS: - (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HUMANS: - (Score:5, Insightful)
The only species with the idiocy and shortsightedness to make a species go extinct
Ridiculous. Humans may be better at causing extinctions than other species but that isn't because other species are reluctant to do it, or consider the implications at all.
Parent
Re:HUMANS: - (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and since we have the ability to both consider the implications of and avoid the extinction of other species, we should at least try to be a little worse at it...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's loser talk!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They cannot adapt to the evolutionary pressure caused by us so they must go extinct. Science trying to reverse this process is hypocritical.
Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only species with the idiocy and shortsightedness to make a species go extinct,
Completely utterly wrong.
All species end up extinct. They are replaced by others which are more fit for the environment.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolve - To move in regular procession through a system.
Extinct - No longer in existence; having died out.
How can a regular procession equate to the cessation of existence?
*burns karma*
Re:Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Score:5, Interesting)
After enough adaptations and mutations, you cease to classify an animal as being in the same species as its ancestor. If these adaptations occur based on local conditions, then it isn't uncommon for the two species to coexist. No matter that they haven't evolved yet enough to invent taxes, death is still certain. And if the local adaptations make one species better globally, then you'll see competition and likely, the extinction of the ancestor's species.
You have to remember that the definition of species is vague, that the tree of life has many branches, and that inevitably, all branches terminate. So evolution constantly produces more and more species, and even when there is no branch, a large enough change will be considered the line between one species and another.
Evolution doesn't necessitate extinction, it's the semantics we use to describe it and the cold hard fact that you can't indefinitely sustain every species that has ever existed on Earth.
Parent
Re:Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Score:5, Interesting)
And this is the fun problem with the layman's explanation of evolution. Unless you were trying to be funny.
The fossil record is littered with hundreds and thousands of creatures that have no direct genetic descendants. They failed, they went extinct, they lost.
However, quite a few other ones survived to evolve into the mass of life we have today.
Natural selection is based on extinction. The failed mutations die. Sometimes the whole failed species dies. But somewhere up the evolutionary tree, their second or third cousins twice removed were better adapted and survived.
It is pure arrogance to think we are the only creatures who drive this process. How many herbivores were eaten by tigers? How many carnivores went extinct their prey moved on or died? How many fish died simply because their part of the world dried up? How many diseases have wiped out hundreds of acres of trees - entire species have gone locally extinct in the last hundred years. Yes, we have a huge affect, but we aren't the only thing.
Note that I'm not saying we shouldn't try to mitigate our effects - if we destroy the environment, we'll be dealing with an entirely new mess that *we* didn't evolve for. But have some perspective.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Natural selection is based on extinction. The failed mutations die. Sometimes the whole failed species dies. But somewhere up the evolutionary tree, their second or third cousins twice removed were better adapted and survived.
This sounds like a lot of free-market libertarian talk to me, sir. You know we don't go for that sort of thing nowadays. Keep the failures alive, I say!
Re:Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Domestic cats,dogs,birds
Vermin, especially rats, pigeons and cockroaches
Food animals
In many ways humans have become the dominant driving force behind evolution. While many many species have died out since we started worrying about it, we are also very close to spawning whole new branches of species that can survive extremely well in a world dominated by human kind. Give it a few million
Re:Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Wrong. Evolution is false.
Evolution is a mathematical concept that can be applied to physical and biological (and other) systems. Saying that evolution is false is a lot like saying that optimization is false, or that group theory is false.
Parent
Re:Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Score:5, Funny)
Saying that evolution is false is a lot like saying that optimization is false
But optimization is, by default, false unless you specify the -O option.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A Dichotomy (Score:3, Interesting)
exactly my point. It also appears [austmus.gov.au] dingo ancestors arrived by boat 3-4 thousand years ago with seafaring humans.
Whether deliberate, through gross negligence or simply out of ignorance, humans have brought the extinction of various species whether directly or indirectly. Whether out of malice or simply out of cause an effect for an unrelated pursuit.
I'm not trying to simply denounce humans as "virii", but to show an interesting
Re:HUMANS: - (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:HUMANS: - (Score:5, Insightful)
"destabilize" is pejorative without qualification. "change" or "influence" is accurate. Perhaps that was not the point you were trying to make. Causing and preventing extinctions are inevitable, amoral events (we damn near exterminate diseases, both animal and human, without much complaint). It's interesting to see how many tree-huggers are on /. Implying that the genetic code of certain fluffy/swimmy organisms, by extension their species, are sancrosanct is disturbingly ignorant. Your Morals May Vary.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you consider humans to be a part of nature, we can do whatever we want, for or against a species.
Ibex 8.10 Cloned (Score:5, Funny)
How fast are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
-We clocked the Pyrenean Ibex at 30mph
-(looking horrified)You cloned a Pyrenean Ibex!?
Somehow, I don't think the Jurassic Park tag is completely accurate...
clinging to the past (Score:2, Insightful)
Extiction is a natural part of life. Over time MOST species have gone extinct with very few ancestral lineages leading to the present extant species. There have been many mass extinctions in the past and there is still significant (though different from previously present) diversity. Are we perhaps a little misguided in our attempts to make this world's diversity static?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
NOT CLONES! NOT CLONES (Score:4, Informative)
If his noodliness had intended mankind to clone things, he would have just left us at the amoeba stage.
Re:NOT CLONES! NOT CLONES (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh, do you actually read the articles you link to?
Sure, I see the "not true identical clones" in there. I also see that they call it "cloning". The adjective doesn't change that it is cloning. Claiming that it's not a clone? Basing that on a few minute changes in mitochrondial DNA? That's just wrong not pedantic. After all, there'll be transcription errors in the clone anyway. The mitochondrial changes are in my view of that order.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The mitochondrial DNA used to create the new egg and with that the "clone" is from a different, albeit related species. So the end-result I think is actually yet another species. Mitochondrial DNA has serious influence on the outcome. Maybe that is even what caused the death of the baby immediately after birth. Too much of a DNA mismatch.
Know I'm just a simple (Score:5, Funny)
city living boy, but when did goats start laying eggs?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
city living boy, but when did goats start laying eggs?
Well, there were some gaps in the DNA sequence, so we filled them in with chicken DNA.
What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a second. So these things went extinct just 10 years ago. Wouldn't it have been a lot easier (and cheaper) to, um, keep some of them alive instead of waiting until they died off? So if they do clone them and they live, how are they supposed to survive now when they couldn't survive just a decade ago?
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Problem is wild animals can't really be reasoned with.
Just because Cows are exhibitionist sex aholics doesn't mean ever species will breed in captivity.
An ibex doesn't care if it's about to go extinct, it's going to be just as easy to breed in captivity if there are a million left or two.
Even some humans swear "if we were the last two people on earth they still wouldn't sleep with you"--Errr "them"! I meant to say "They wouldn't sleep with them"!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a second. So these things went extinct just 10 years ago. Wouldn't it have been a lot easier (and cheaper) to, um, keep some of them alive instead of waiting until they died off? So if they do clone them and they live, how are they supposed to survive now when they couldn't survive just a decade ago?
It's pretty expensive to try to keep a breeding population of every endangered species alive in captivity (we kill off a huge number every year), and some animals don't breed well in captivity. If they are in the wild you have much less control (it doesn't sound like they had any of these in captivity, according to wiki). And the last one died 9 years ago but the last potential mate may have died much longer ago than that.
"how are they supposed to survive now" is a good question, but I don't think this ef
Other cloned critters (Score:5, Informative)
There was an article along these lines in New Scientist a couple of week ago, looking at the availability of DNA and the availability of modern host species. Some are fairly good, like tasmanian tigers, which have lots of tissue samples available and a good candidate for a host, the anything-but-extinct tasmanian devil. Marsupials also have very short gestation, with the embryo completing its development in the mother's pouch.
Other are farther out, like the dodo (no good DNA samples), the woolly rhinoceros (lots of DNA, the modern host is itself seriously endangered), and so on. One extinct species of armadillo would be the size of a VW Beetle. Even if you had DNA, no modern armadillo or related creature is anywhere nearly big enough.
...laura
Inbred sheep (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inbred sheep (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. The only reason inbreeding causes genetic issues is because recessive traits become far more likely to crop up twice then in the general population. If you pick an individual who doesn't have any negative recessive genetic traits, there's no problem... *or* if you genetically tweak the DNA before you go about the procedure to remove those genetic traits you don't want to show up.
Of course the genetic manipulation required to do this on an animal who's species is already extinct is extremely difficult if not impossible with modern techniques... but so is producing a truly viable clone of an extinct species in the first place (one that lives a full life, not 7 minutes, or even the half-life we found cloned sheep got).
Parent
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point of reviving this species of Ibex, unless we also remove the conditions that caused it to go extinct in the first place? I'm guessing that condition is known by the name Homo sapiens?
It's guilt and sentimentalism driving this behavior, not pragmatism. Does anyone recall the movie "Silent Running"? We're continuing to motor headlong toward that consequence and not making the pragmatic changes necessary to avert it.
To hell with fighting global warming or terrorism: we need to be reversing human overpopulation, NOW, before Mother Nature finally finds a way to do it for us. Cloning a few members of this Ibex species is a waste of effort when the PROBLEM still exists and is GROWING. Are we going to put these Ibex in a space ark and fly them out to Jupiter?
I love your idea (Score:5, Funny)
Let's start by killing you off first.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A few thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
For starters, I'm suprised with all the talk about cloning Mammoths and such no one thought to start with something simpler like the Yangtze river dolphin that went extinct just last year. Certainly there's no problem getting DNA samples for that. It's nice then to see there are scientific groups starting with something a little more realistic before considering moving on to the longer extinct species.
But here's my concern, it's not that getting DNA is the issue as such, the problem is getting enough DNA that's genetically diverse enough to maintain a healthy population. If we manage to get the DNA of a mammoth and bring it back then great, that's fine but what then? I'm not convinced we can get DNA from a diverse enough selection of a species to maintain a healthy population. Mammoths aside, do we likely have diverse enough set of DNA from the Yangtze river dolphin, our most recent loss, let alone from this Ibex which died out 8 or 9 years ago?
If we're serious about cloning as a technique to bring back extinct species, then the reality is we need to be archiving DNA from thousands of members of each endangered species now. A lack of diversity in a species brought back by cloning is simply going to lead to their extinction again.
This is a problem that's already affecting some of the flora that is close to extinction. We have in recent years lost (or very likely lost) species of flora from the wild but yet have them en-masse in cultivation. Perhaps a good example is Echnocactus grusonii, otherwise known as the golden barrel cactus which almost everyone will have seen as they can be purchased in nearly every garden centre worldwide. It's somewhat of a success story that the plant (which is pretty impressive) will be available for future generations to see, but it's also rather a problem in that most of them out there all stem from a single plant. As one plant can provide millions of seeds most nurseries will just take those seeds and plant them en-masse (usually in Spanish fields in Europe, but using similar methods in the southern US and China). Each seed will have some genetic diversity if cross-pollination occured between two separate plans but this by itself isn't enough.
To provide an example, anyone who has been to Arizona or lives there will know that it's a pretty diverse state in terms of climate and one of it's most picturesque plants the Saguaro cactus (Carnegia gigantea) grows across large parts of the state, ranging from some of the lower lying areas, through to some of the high er lying areas, now the problem is that those living in the hottest parts of the state, such as down by Tucson wont see temperatures anywhere near as low as those at higher, colder areas. Furthermore, some populations will be prone to suffering snow sometimes, and getting a lot more went and damp than others due to increased humidity in some areas and this is the crux of the problem. We could not take seeds from a population that has grown in the desert regions for thousands of years and plant them in the colder, wetter regions and expect them to survive as a population, therefore if a species like this were to go extinct and we only had viable seed from a specific region it is possible that they would be limited to that region, it would take thousands and thousands years for natural selection to select those hardy enough to move from that region back to the areas they previously inhabited, but during that time the reintroduced population is at risk due to the much smaller areas they'd occupy. Currently, many species are critically endangered for exactly this reason, they may grow in areas no bigger than a small village, and those areas are all too often at risk- a current example is Arrojadoa marylanae which exists only a small quartz hill range in Brazil that is currently targetted for mining of the quartz, destruction of this small area will lead to extinction of at least one, maybe multiple species of flora from our planet, and it currently doesn't seem to be that we have enough samples of this held sa
D: (Score:5, Funny)
Cold Tolerant Ibex (Score:3, Funny)
".... a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen."
They should be cross-breeding them till they come up with one that lives in liquid helium instead...
Extinct? (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose, for 7 minutes, it technically wasn't extinct!
Re:Extinct? (Score:5, Funny)
Or to become extinct twice.
Parent
Re:Extinct? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent