Fatu, a female northern white rhinoceros who lives in a Kenyan conservation park, is one of just seven of her kind left in the world. But millions of her stem cells, stored in a freezer in California, might one day help boost her population's ranks.
The northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) and another animal facing extinction, the drill monkey (Mandrillus leucophaeus), have become the first endangered animals to have their cells transformed into stem cells like those found in early embryos. These cells can be stored and multiplied in culture, and are theoretically capable of making any tissue in the body — including sperm cells that could be used in assisted captive breeding programmes. The work is published online today in Nature Methods.
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