At least a virtual Noah’s Ark for our descendants
The world becomes poorer. Every week, in one of the gross mass extinctions, probably hundreds of species disappear irretrievably from the earth. An international group of scientists therefore proposes to build a worldwide network of databases to preserve the DNA of endangered species.
If nothing can or will be done against the destruction of the natural habitat, technology is always good to compensate for the losses. The capacity of zoological or botanical gardens is in no way sufficient to ensure the survival of endangered species, especially since their number is continuously increasing. Cheaper and more practicable would be indeed the initiative to try coordinated and worldwide, "for each endangered species to store DNA samples or frozen cells or ties containing DNA". Otherwise, as scientists say, "our descendants will be left with little more than brief descriptions in scientific publications and exhibits in museums."
Oliver Ryder of the Zoological Society of San Diego, which is preparing a major conference on the subject in May, co-authored the plan in a Science article "DNA Banks for Endangered Animal Species" and believes that this project could also serve to use the power of genetic analysis to prevent species extinction in the future. Genetic analysis could open up possibilities for treatment of endangered species, providing information on evolution or threats from disease or inbreeding. And of course one could also, if one contributes on the one side to the extinction of the diversity of species, on their side at the same time use progressive cloning techniques, in order to revive extinct species.
"In the foreseeable future, DNA sequencing will be fully automated, and our descendants will quickly be able to obtain the sequence of any organism whose genetic data has been properly collected and preserved", the scientists write in the Science article. "If enough genomes are available, they can reconstruct not only what the organism looked like, but also what its evolutionary relationships were, how certain genes arose, which encode proteins for certain tasks, and how controlled programming evolved."
Cells and ties can be stored in cryogenic conditions, and purified DNA can be stored at room temperature for hundreds of thousands of years. First of all, however, a list of already existing databases is to be compiled on the Internet. The goal is to collect the DNA of at least 5200 species.
If you want to keep the species alive, the collection of DNA is not enough. Habitats had to be protected, which would have to be available even if extinct species were actually to be brought back to life and not just to live in zoos, and this would be extremely costly. A virtual Noah’s Ark in the form of databases with sequenced genomes will probably be the "ecological" niche for many extinct species, while those that are not will simply disappear from the memory of the earth. 30000 plant species are also considered to be endangered.
According to a study published in Science (27 March 1998, Vol. 279, 5359), even the 10 percent of each state’s territory required by conservation organizations was not enough to prevent a mass extinction. But even these ten percent have so far been agreed upon by only 20 nations, of which only five are in the tropics, i.e. where there is the greatest diversity of species. At least 33 percent of a country had to be put under strict nature protection according to the scientists, whereby then naturally still the question is, which areas of land these should be, whereby for instance also between niches with high biodiversity and those with rare animals had to decide.