The Big Event

This blog will highlight a specific point in the de-extinction controversy. Specifically the first successful de-extinction of a species.

In 1999, scientists including Alberto Fernandez-Arias obtained cells from the last living Bucardo and placed a tracker on her. A Bucardo is a type of mountain goat that was highly adapted to the extreme mountain colds and harsh environment. In 2000, Celia, the name of the last Bucardo, was killed by a falling tree. Since the team had caught Celia and preserved her cells in liquid nitrogen at -321, they were going to try to revive her now extinct species. Over the next 3 years, the team gathered other goat eggs and stripped them of their DNA. In 2003, they then injected Celia, or rather her cell’s DNA, into the blank eggs. 57 of these mini-Celias were implanted into surrogate goats. Of the 57, only 7 goats became pregnant with the baby Bucardo. Of that 7 only one Bucardo was able to be carried to its birth. That baby Bucardo lived for about 10 minutes until she died. The baby goat was born with a defect in one of her lungs causing her to not be able to breath and eventually die. This was the first “successful” de-extinction of a species. One thing to consider when talking about de-extinction is that the new organisms are basically clones of the thing donating its cells. This means the new organisms will all be the same gender and have the same genetic make-up. This limits genetic diversity and, if the species reproduces sexually, the production of new baby clones. This attempt raised many questions about cloning and what it entails.

WEBER, Pascal. "Sleeping Mountain Goats" 08/05/2014 via flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic