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Frog cloning, what are we trying to achieve?

4/16/2013

 
The interaction between synthetic biology and conservation was on the news today in Nature.  Recent news that the extinct Rheobatrachus silus has been cloned (well, up to a point, the embryos did not survive more than a few days) brings up many questions.  The question that I personally find most important is: what are we trying to achieve here?

Let's first introduce our main actor, the Rheobatrachus silus.  This frog was (or is) an Australian frog with one peculiar habit: following fertilisation the female would swallow the eggs, which would develop safely in her stomach.  Once the tadpoles had metamorphosed into small froglets they would be 'regurgitated' out by the mother.  Nobody knows why these frogs went extinct (the fact that they were a small population to start with did not help either), though infectious diseases might have played a role.  People of the persuasion that we should put a price tag on everything should consider what a wonderful model for gastric inflammation we have lost.

Picture
More to the point of my post.  I am personally not that concerned that ham-fisted scientists will unleash a plague of mutants on the planet.  We can barely get the embryos to survive in the first place.  What I am concerned about is that I do not really see a long term strategy behind this work.  Assuming we were successful in cloning Rheobatrachus to adulthood, what next?  Cloning extinct species is fine and dandy, but what are we going to do with the resulting animals, assuming we get there?  If we cannot produce a viable population, the interest from a conservation standpoint is lost to me.  For many extinct species we know nothing or next to nothing about their demographic parameters and the amount of genetic variability present in the species as a whole and in the different subpopulations (if present).  What are we planning to do, fetch every possible source of DNA from museum collections hoping to get enough variation (and what if all specimens are the same sex?)?  And then?  Producing the odd live individual might look like a small miracle, but what good it is to get one Rheobatrachus silus?  We would need to get many, with sufficient genetic variation, and make sure that they can keep reproducing by themselves.  This seems to be a tough call.

Human ingenuity and technological advances can sort many problems.  Extinction is not one of them.  For complex animals such as amphibians the chances of undoing our actions on the natural world are slim.  And what is potentially worrying is that the false security that 'we can clone them back to life' will stop people from preventing extinction in the real world in the first place.  So, once more, what are we trying to achieve?  And are we sure we are using our resources to best effect?

Of Rhinos and Amphibians

4/10/2013

 
Rhinos have been in the news quite a lot recently.  The latest (official press release) is that a rhino DNA database will be created to try and figure out where horns seized by police come from -- the damn things are so valuable people are starting to steal them from museums.  This is quite interesting because I am a great believer that genetics offers an important tool to monitor and to protect endangered species.


These latest news are very poignant to me, but I had been thinking about rhinos for a while now.  Recently there was a controversy about the role of trophy hunting rhinos to raise money for rhino conservation. The Timbavati Game Reserve Chairman Tom Hancock, a reserve which admittedly has done a lot to preserve rhinos, posted an open letter expressing his opinion that rhino trophy hunting has a place as a valuable source of income for rhino conservation (the original letter seems to have been removed from the Timbavati site, but can be read here).  These thoughts have angered many people, who basically commented that rhinos should not be hunted, and that they should be protected either because they generate a revenue through tourism, or because we should protect rhinos as a matter of ethics.


The reason why I got so interested in the rhino debate is the following.  I am interested in conservation, and I know that, of all animals, amphibians are benefiting the least from conservation efforts.  In addition, amphibians are the group of vertebrates that has the largest number of species at risk of extinction.  This is because amphibians are threatened by both human activities and newly emerging infectious diseases (Ranavirus and Batrachochytrium dendrobatis).  To me, the recent rhino news show that people understand the need for, and are prepared to:

1)  protect the environment which a species needs to exist in the wild
2)  take additional measures on top of (1) to protect the individual animals
3)  invest to set up a genetic database to help the conservation of rhinos. 



I like rhinos a lot, and I am very happy all the three things above are done for their conservation and management.  But I'd dearly love to see the same efforts to be done for amphibians.  Amphibians are being literally hammered by infectious diseases, and a number of species have gone extinct because of these infections.  I have tried to obtain research funding to test if there are any genes that confer resistance to these diseases, with the hope we could use this knowledge to protect the most at risk species.  But unfortunately amphibian are small, modest and, Kermit aside, not that famous and charismatic, so that was not a priority.  Colleagues also interested in amphibian conservation have problems getting funds for this kind of research.


I do not believe that we should spend less on the conservation of any species to divert the funds for another. What I believe in is that we should accept that we must invest more, much more, in conservation.  So, if we are happy to invest to give one more chance to rhinos, can we try to do the same for frogs and newts?

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