5 days ago
Wildlife on ice: Singapore freezing animal cells in bid to preserve native life
SINGAPORE, July 14 — Heard of seed banks? Singapore is now making a similar preservation facility but for animal cells.
The Straits Times reported on Singapore's own Noah's Ark of sorts, that will house frozen cells and tissues of South-east Asian animals.
Mandai Wildlife Group, manager of Singapore's five wildlife parks, uses special cooling technology to keep the frozen cells viable.
After the cells are thawed, they will be able to replicate and grow.
So far Mandai's conservation arm — Mandai Nature — has successfully banked the live cells of 10 bird species including the endangered lilac-crowned amazon, milky stork and Bali myna.
This kind of effort is called biobanking, a means of preserving and storing biological material from living matter whether flora or fauna and most often utilizing cryopreservation where samples are kept in sub-zero temperatures, frozen.
Mandai Nature CEO Sonja Luz has stated that the biobanks' main goal is conservation.
She told ST: 'For now, our aim is to collect, freeze and store as many samples as possible to create a safety net for some of the most threatened species of our region. Our goal is conservation, and nothing but that.'