The world’s first successfully cloned Black-footed ferret has been born

Friday, February 19th, 2021

The world’s first successfully cloned Black-footed ferret has been born, marking the first time a U.S. endangered species has been cloned:

“Elizabeth Ann” was born on December 10, 2020, and is the clone of “Willa,” a wild-caught Black-footed ferret whose cell line was cryopreserved in 1988. A genomic study led, funded, and developed by Revive & Restore in 2014 helped determine that Willa’s genome possessed nearly three times more genetic diversity than the current Black-footed ferret population. This means that her clone Elizabeth Ann is now the most genetically valuable Black-footed ferret alive. This birth is the result of a long-standing genetic rescue effort for the Black-footed ferret species, the goal of which is to increase the genetic diversity and fitness of one of America’s most endangered species to help ensure its full recovery in the wild.

Comments

  1. Wang Wei Lin says:

    Why?

  2. Kirk says:

    Why not?

    Probably useful as a proof-of-concept and learning experience as we work towards bringing back extinct animals like the wooly mammoth, who’re apparently key and critical to sub-Arctic environments and the maintenance thereof…

    As an aside, one thing I’d really, really like to know is why so many Pleistocene mammals like the mammoth and mastodon are found apparently quick-frozen in the midst of activities like eating. WTF led to that happening? There’s an apparently accurate story about one they found up in Alaska that still had a mouthful of spring wildflowers in mid-chew, and no apparent reason for it to have just dropped dead out of the blue–Wasn’t caught in an avalanche or anything like that, just out on the tundra one minute, happily grazing, then DOA the next.

    I’m not sure I want to know what caused that, or if that phenomenon is common. Strikes me as being really, really depressing to know that there’s a climatic/weather phenomenon that’s capable of a quick-freeze kill of something elephant-sized…

    The world is a stranger place than many of us imagine.

  3. Sam J. says:

    “… really like to know is why so many Pleistocene mammals like the mammoth and mastodon are found apparently quick-frozen in the midst of activities like eating. WTF led to that happening?…”

    I would say the best explanation I’ve seen by far is that a comet hit Greenland. This caused flash freezing in some places and massive, extremely massive floods in North America wiping out most all the mega-fauna. (No it wasn’t humans it was a comet).

    One the really, really, really best expositions on this is an interview by Joe Rogan on the subject.

    Joe Rogan Experience #725 – Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson

    http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/78069283

    It’s one of the best explaining this. Here’s a link to JRE #872 which also covers it.

    http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/92862338

    These things are super interesting and well worth watching. They are several hours long but you get great info.

  4. Ezra says:

    The meat I guess to some degree is still edible. Solzhenitsyn talks about prehistoric frozen salamander being eaten by the Gulag prisoners.

  5. bruce says:

    Herbivores eat constantly.

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