San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s ‘Frozen Zoo’ turns 50, goes global

Frozen Zoo founder Dr Kurt Benirschke holding a genetic sample at his Frozen Zoo in Courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance In a world being rewritten by a profoundly changing weather and environmental devastation biobanking efforts may hold a key to species survival Biobanking is the practice of storing living genetic material such as living cells or sperm and ova While it is bulk often associated with human material San Diego s Frozen Zoo was the world s first large-scale systematic cryogenic biological bank dedicated to preserving living cells and reproductive material from wildlife It remains the largest and preponderance diverse collection of its kind Currently living cell lines from more than individual animals representing species are banked at the San Diego Wildlife Alliance s Frozen Zoo the organization disclosed Now it s expanding its vision The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance alongside the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission and the Animal Biobanking for Conservation Specialist Group has established the Center for Species Survival s Biodiversity Biobanking in order to aid species resilience The collection includes living cells embryos and gametes from mammals birds reptiles amphibians and fish all stored in liquid nitrogen at - degrees Fahrenheit It is also cryopreserving kelp oaks and other species that are traditionally very hard to biobank Species are vanishing at astonishing rates announced Megan Owen Ph D vice president of wildlife conservation science at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in a report She explained that by a few estimates the planet loses more than a hundred species every day due to mounting environmental and human-driven pressures While we are advancing technologies to safeguard biodiversity we recognize that nature itself remains the the majority powerful biodiversity bank there is and that biobanking is a unique tool we must develop and use to protect life on Earth complementing habitat and species protections The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance alongside the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission and the Animal Biobanking for Conservation Specialist Group has now established the Center for Species Survival s Biodiversity Biobanking in order to aid species resilience The collection includes living cells embryos and gametes from mammals birds reptiles amphibians and fish all stored in liquid nitrogen at - degrees Fahrenheit It is also cryopreserving kelp oaks and other species that are traditionally very demanding to biobank The Frozen Zoo was the creation of German-American pathologist and animal conservationist Kurt Benirschke M D who passed away in At the time that he created it there was no apparatus to use the samples beyond basic research It is one of six unique biobanking collections that make up the SDZWA s Wildlife Biodiversity Bank Other collections include the Tissue and DNA Bank Native Plant Gene Bank Pathology Archive Clinical Repository and Wildlife Artifacts in order to preserve biodiversity