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IPB researchers introduce IVF tech to help save endangered animals
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Delilah, a seven-year-old female rhino, is pictured on Nov. 26, 2023, two days after giving birth to a Sumatran rhino calf at Way Kambas National Park in Lampung. (AFP/Handout/Environment and Forestry Ministry)
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group of researchers from the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) has introduced assisted reproductive technology (ART) for endangered species in an effort to assist in their conservation.
The technology involves in vitro fertilization (IVF), an approach to produce an embryo outside the body using egg and sperm cells obtained from animals.
The process mimics natural fertilization but in the assisted approach, “the sperm cell is injected directly into the egg cell” under a microscope, said veterinarian Arief Budiono of IPB’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in a statement issued on Tuesday, as quoted by kompas.com.
The embryo produced from the assisted fertilization is later transferred to the recipient animal or frozen using liquid nitrogen until a recipient is ready to accept the fertilized egg.
Read also: Endangered Sumatran rhino born in Lampung
The IVF could optimize animal reproductive functions, allowing humans to save endangered animals like Sumatran rhinos and Sumatran tigers from extinction, Arief said. Such a process can be repeated as long as the researchers can obtain egg cells from a living animal.
The IPB team is working with the Forestry Ministry to apply the technology to Sumatran rhinos.
Aside from the assisted fertilization, the researchers also use a BioBank to store sperm cells, eggs and embryos and freeze somatic cells, which are used as donor cells in cloning programs.
The government has launched several initiatives to save Sumatran rhinos, a critically endangered animal with no more than 40 left in the wild, according to the latest figures from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
