THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
January 6, 2023 at 07:00 JST
A northern white rhinoceros, a species on the verge of extinction (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
SUITA, Osaka Prefecture--An international research team may have found a way to save the northern white rhinoceros, perhaps the world’s most critically endangered mammal as only two, both female, are known to exist.
The researchers, including Katsuhiko Hayashi, a reproductive biology professor at Osaka University, created cells that can turn into ova and sperm from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells taken from an individual that died in 2015.
Northern white rhinoceroses used to inhabit parts of Africa. The only surviving members are kept at a protection center in Kenya.
Poaching and environmental damage are responsible for numbers dwindling to the point that natural breeding is now impossible.
The researchers, primarily from Osaka University and Kyushu University, as well as the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany, started a project to convert the animal’s iPS cells into primordial germ cell (PGC)-like cells, which can become ova and sperm.
They cultivated skin-derived iPS cells from a northern white rhinoceros that died in captivity in 2015 and successfully created PGC-like cells.
The culturing method was established using embryonic stem (ES) cells from a southern white rhinoceros, a species genetically close to the northern white rhinoceros.
It also emerged that the process of the rhinoceros’ reproductive cell differentiation resembles that of mankind much more closely than previously thought.
The research team plans to grow PGC-like cells into ova and sperm, with an eye toward producing a new northern white rhinoceros calf via artificial insemination utilizing frozen spermatozoon and other reproductive cells.
“We want to apply our technique to the preservation of other vanishing animals,” said Masafumi Hayashi, a specially appointed researcher at Osaka University, who is part of the team.
The findings were published in the Science Advances journal on Dec. 10.
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