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BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- A group of Argentinean scientists are working to preserve the planet's biodiversity by making advances in the cloning of exotic species such as the Asiatic Cheetah, a species in danger of extinction.
"We are working on non-native species as a first step. Our main objective is to avoid the extinction of indigenous species, such as the jaguar," said Daniel Salamone, associate professor of agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and a member of Conicet, Argentina's foremost scientific body.
"The Buenos Aires zoo has a genetic data bank in which all of its species are preserved, both indigenous and exotic ones. We took frozen skin cells from that data bank to produce cheetah embryos. We were successful, making this a valid new cloning technique," explained Salamone to Xinhua in a recent interview.
According to the scientist, this technique allows for the production of embryos with a great number of stem cells. The next step for the team will be to produce sperm and eggs from these cells.
Lucia Moro, a biotechnology specialist at UBA, told Xinhua that her doctoral thesis is focused on the cloning process, particularly on the creation of eggs from cell cultivation. She particularly focuses on the enucleation of the egg, wherein its own genetic material is removed and replaced with that of the animal the team wants to clone.
"This project began with the cloning of domestic cats before we transferred the process to wild felines. So far, we have been successful with cheetah, tiger, and Bengal cat cells," said Moro, "We now believe this process is transferable to other feline species, as long as the genetic material is available and cells are in good condition."
However, the team has not been able to take the project past the embryonic stage as their agreement with the zoo mandates they must follow the ethical standards of the Latin American Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which only allows work on embryos.
The director of the Buenos Aires Zoo genetic data bank and biotechnology lab, Adrian Sestelo, also told Xinhua how this project would benefit animals native to the region.
"We began with the cheetah, as it is in risk of extinction, but it is also related to the puma and the jaguar," he explained, making the research relevant to their savior as well.
After 20 years, the genetic data bank has 6,500 samples from over 400 individual animals and covering 87 distinct species, making it the largest in Latin America.
