Eggs removed from the last two female northern white rhinos have been fertilized with sperm from the now-dead last male, but it will be about 10 days before it's known whether the eggs have become embryos, an Italian assisted-breeding company said Monday.
"We expect some of them will develop into an embryo," Cesare Galli, a founder of Avantea and an expert in animal cloning, said.
Avantea said that only seven of 10 eggs extracted last week from the females in Kenya could be used in the fertilization attempts Sunday using frozen sperm that had been taken from the male, which died in March 2018.
Wildlife experts and veterinarians are hoping that the species can reproduce via a surrogate mother rhino.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:37AM
The important thing is to collect the DNA sequences, and eventually someone will figure out how to create a viable synthetic egg/embryo. Even if eventually means decades or a century from now.
Sequences should be collected from as many specimens as possible to maximize genetic diversity, although that could be fudged on the computer, or inbreeding problems (which probably already exist if the population dwindled to nothing) could be corrected.
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