Pyrenean Ibex - Cloning Project

Cloning Project

The biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. announced on October 8, 2000 that the Spanish government has agreed to their offer to use nuclear transfer cloning technology in collaboration with other scientific partners to clone the Pyrenean ibex, also known as a bucardo, from the tissue that was taken in 1999. The cloned individual was captured in National Ordesa Park in Huesca, Spain; skin biopsies were taken and cryopreserved in nitrogen. Celia, the last ibex, died a year after donating tissue from her ear.

It was expected to be easier than the cloning experiment of endangered gaur (Bos gaurus), as the reproductive biology of goats is better known and the normal gestation period is only five months. In addition, only certain extinct animals are candidates for cloning because of the need for a suitable proxy surrogate to carry the clone to term. ATC has agreed with the government of Aragon that the future cloned Pyrenean ibexes will be returned to their original habitat.

Celia provided suitable tissue samples for cloning. However, attempts to clone her have highlighted a major problem: even if it were possible to produce another healthy Pyrenean ibex, there are no males for the female clone to breed with. To produce a viable population of a previously extinct animal, there will need to be genetic samples from many individuals to create genetic diversity in the cloned population. This is a major obstacle to reestablishing an extinct species population through cloning. One solution could be to cross Celia's clones with males of another subspecies, although the offspring would not be pure Pyrenean ibex. A more ambitious plan would be to remove one X chromosome and add a Y chromosome from another still-existing subspecies, creating a male Pyrenean ibex, but such technology does not yet exist and it is not known whether this will be feasible at all without irreparably damaging the cell.

Three teams of scientists, two Spanish and one French, are involved in the cloning project. One of the Spanish teams was led by Dr. Jose Folch of Zaragoza, from the Centre of Food Technology and Research of Aragon. The other teams had researchers from the National Research Institute of Agriculture and Food in Madrid.

The project is coordinated by the Food and Agricultural Investigation Service of the Government of Aragon (Spanish: Servicio de Investigación Agroalimentaria del Gobierno de Aragón) and by the National Institute of Investigation and Food and Agrarian Technology (Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria). The National Institute of Agrarian Investigation of France is also involved in the project.

Researchers took adult somatic cells from the tissue and fused them with oocytes from goats that had their nuclei removed. The purpose of removing the nuclei from the goats’ oocytes was to extract all the DNA of the goat, so there would be no genetic contribution to the clone from the egg donor. The resultant embryos were transferred into a domestic goat (Capra hircus), to act as a surrogate mother. The first cloning attempts in 2003 failed. Of the 285 embryos reconstructed, 54 were transferred to 12 mountain goat and mountain goat-domesticated goat hybrids, but only two survived the initial two months of gestation before they too died. In 2009, one clone was born alive, but died seven minutes later, due to physical defects in the lungs. There was an atelectasis and an extra lobe in the left lung. This is not surprising, as lung defects have occurred in sheep clones before; the famous clone Dolly had a different sort of lung defect. Atelectasis doesn’t allow normal oxygen absorption to healthy tissues and is often related to a pneumothorax. DNA decomposes even when frozen, and the DNA is worse off because it was taken from an aged individual (Celia was 13). Aged DNA is known to cause cloned animals problems because of shortened telomeres, resulting in decreased lifespans. This means that had the clone survived the initial problems, it still would have had a shortened lifespan. However, the offspring of clones would have normal lifespans.

This was the first attempt to revive an extinct subspecies.