BioRescue Northern White Rhino Recovery, Embryo development Fatu and Suni © Cesare Galli, Avantea Perfecting the technique in unchartered territory “It’s the first time we try this procedure with this species so there’s also an unknown factor of timing and protocol to consider”. “We have ten oocytes and the percentage of potential embryos is about 20 per cent, so two embryos is a good average,” says Cesare Galli, founder and director of Avantea, and embryologist famous for cloning a horse for the first time. Extracting their eggs was a tricky process – a procedure that has never been attempted in northern white rhinos before – but ultimately the team counted ten viable oocytes, five from each rhino. At Galli’s lab in Cremona, the team waited about ten to twelve days for the fertilized eggs to develop into embryos. On 22 August this year, the oocytes were successfully retrieved from anesthetized Fatu and Najin and, during the night, airlifted to Avantea in Cremona for insemination. To bypass this issue, the embryos will be implanted in surrogate mothers of the southern white rhino species, of which there are many more specimens – between 17,212 and 18,915 in the wild. In 2014, scientists learned that Fatu and Najin were likely to be unfit for birthing: one has problems in the ligaments of her hind legs, making pregnancy risky, and the other is likely infertile because of cysts and uterine lesions. Susanne Holtze from Leibniz-IZW (right), just got their first look at the ovaries showing that the ovarian stimulation protocol worked well and that there were a good number of follicles to puncture © Ami Vitale Saving northern white rhinos from extinction Thomas Hildebrandt from Leibniz-IZW (middle) and Dr. Robert Hermesfrom Leibniz-IZW (left), Prof. (Rtd) John Waweru said, “pioneering in vitro embryos of the northern white rhino is a strong testament to what committed partnership can achieve in pushing the frontiers of science to save a creature from extinction.” Fatu is undergoing the ovum pick-up procedure. The consortium includes Avantea, an Italian lab for advanced technologies in animal reproduction based in the northern city of Cremona, which has led the in vitro fertilization process the Kenya Wildlife Service Ol Pejeta Conservancy of course and last but not least, Dvůr Králové Zoo, a safari park in the Czech Republic and one of the best rhino breeders outside of Africa.Īt a press conference where the consortium announced the creation of embryos in Cremona on Wednesday September 11 th, the Director General of Kenya Wildlife Service, Brig. But if we succeed, we have a blueprint model that we can use for other species,” Steven Seet, head of Science Communication at IZW, points out. We only have two females left, so everybody would say, two females? It’s not possible to get the species back from the brink of extinction. “This is a blueprint that we’re developing with our technology. The embryos are now stored in liquid nitrogen to be transferred into a surrogate mother in the near future. Using the eggs collected from the two remaining females and frozen sperm from deceased males, they successfully created two northern white rhino embryos. Today, the international consortium of scientists and conservationists has achieved a milestone in assisted reproduction that may be a pivotal turning point in the fate of these magnificent mammals. Cesare Galli (right), are searching for oocytes © Ami Vitale Thomas Hildebrandt from Leibniz-IZW (middle) and Prof. Susanne Holtze from Leibniz-IZW (left), Prof. The procedure was the result of years of research, development, adjustments and practice. For several years before Sudan’s death, scientists at BioRescue had been collecting and freezing semen from northern white rhino bulls, including the last survivor, and testing in vitro fertilization to perfect the technique. The group devised a scheme to regenerate the animal’s population through in vitro fertilization, a process in which egg and sperm are fertilized in a lab, therefore outside the animal’s body. In vitro fertilization: a blueprint for other species? Rwanda welcomes the return of the black rhino after a 10-year absence.Another giant has left us: the Sumatran rhino is extinct in the wild in Sabah.Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, has died.An international consortium of resarchers called BioRescue, led by Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in the German capital Berlin, has given us an answer on how to save the northern white rhino from extinction by turning to advanced reproductive technologies. However, scientists may have found a way to overturn the hourglass and bring these mammals, a subspecies of the white rhino, back from extinction. Najin lives at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya © Ami Vitale Northern white rhino keeper, James Mwenda, checks on Najin, one of the last two northern white rhino on the planet.
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