A Chinese team of scientists he cloned an arctic wolf for the first time in the world. The result may strengthen research to avoid the extinction of numerous species, and guarantee biodiversity.
Difficult but important
Animal cloning has a long history behind it: this Arctic wolf cub comes after only 25 other species, 26 years after its first success. You will all remember it, sensational and "lucky": in 1996 Dolly the sheep was cloned from the cell of an adult animal after 277 failed attempts.
From the skin cells of Maya, an arctic wolf from the Harbin Polarland theme park collected in 2020, a "surrogate mother" beagle gave birth to a cloned and healthy Arctic wolf.
To succeed in the new enterprise (Maya "2.0" is the result of the implantation of 85 embryos) was the Synogene Biotechnology, a biotech company based in Beijing.
Due gocce d'acqua
"After two years of painstaking effort, the Arctic wolf has been successfully cloned," he exults Mi Jidong, general manager of Sinogene, in the recent press conference to present the results. "It is the first case of this kind in the world".
As of September 19, Maya was 100 days old and in good health. She now finds herself with her surrogate mother in a Sinogene laboratory, but she will move to Harbin Polarland, where she may have to live for life, due to lack of early socialization with other wolves.
Inevitable, because despite having the same genome as the original wolf, Maya 2.0 did not live with other wolves, but with a dog.
Arctic wolf today, and tomorrow?
The Arctic wolf is not an endangered species (luckily it lives in remote regions, far from humans). Of course, in the future, climate change could make it more difficult for this species to find food, which could put it at risk.
Meanwhile, however, the knowledge gained from the creation of Maya could help researchers create healthy clones of other endangered or even extinct mammals. Other teams are currently working to resurrect both the extinct Tasmanian tiger and, more ambitiously, the woolly mammoth (I talked about it here).
Not bad in full sixth mass extinction, and moreover with our hand.
Ensuring that the Earth remains a planet rich in biodiversity is the key to the survival of our own species: the first cloning of an Arctic wolf could help us do our part to "repair" the damage.
