May 23, 2025 • 47 mins
In this episode, hosts Rick and Marco are headed back to the Frozen Zoo® to speak with its curator, Marlys Houck. This first-of-its-kind biobank began with a cell, and over the past 50 years it has grown to be the most extensive collection of its kind in the world, preserving living cell lines of mammals, birds, reptiles, aquatic wildlife, plants, and more. Discover how the trailblazing Frozen Zoo is preserving hope for the future of life on Earth.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, I'm Rick Schwartz.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
What is the s the world? A MARKA. Wentz.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of
wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal facts.
This podcast is in production with iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio and
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and international nonprofit conservation organization
which oversees the San Diego Zoo and kind of a
corner where we are now in the Safari Park.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I was getting distracted. He retired in direction I would do.
It's a very long series of words. We're in a
really unique spot, but you know, it reminds me of
our last episode.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
We learned a lot about education, right.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I had no idea we had so many programs not
only here at the Safari Park but also.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
At the San Diego Zoo.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
But there was another location that I forgot all about, the.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Conservation Corps which is based out of this area right here,
but they cover all sorts of things all over the
s FRII Park. But we are in the science hub
of the entire San Diego Zoo Wildlife Allion.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Percent and for our listeners, we're in the courtyard right now,
So you might hear a little bit of the waterfall
going on a beautiful fountain.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
And to your point, there's a lot of stuff going
on here.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
We hinted about something even the last episode of last season,
right about the Frozen Zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yes, we've mentioned it before and again this year, twenty
twenty five is the fiftieth anniversary of the Frozen Zoo,
and we learned from previous interviews it was sort of
a well, we should do this because it seems important.
We're not sure why. We're now starting to see a
lot of sort of for the lack of a better term,
fruit of all that labor and that curiosity of doctor
Bernursa doing things. But today we are talking again about
(01:35):
the Frozen Zoo. But we have a special guest, the
actual curator of the Frozen Zoo. Why don't you introduce
yourself with your official title too.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
By the way, Hi, I'm marlus Houck. I'm the curator
of the Frozen Zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
So in our world where we come from animal care,
curators looking over the managers and the teams who are
also then in charge of the animals, and they're also
looking at well, what animals do we have here? And
there working with other zoological facilities and conservation organizations, and
there's this big overseeing view of the population of animals, birds, mammals, reptiles,
(02:10):
all of it. Even plants. There's plant curators. What does
the curator of the frozen Zoo do.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
It's actually pretty similar to what you just describe, except
our animals or our little things.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
We're taking care of our cells.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh okay, it's slightly different.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Slightly different, but we're care taking them. They're alive, they're living,
they're growing, they're dividing cells, and the technicians have to
grow them for a number of weeks before they can
be added to the Frozen Zoo.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
And same as other.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Curators, we have to decide what we're bringing into the
collection and how to manage that.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Right right me. I actually wanted to go back a
little bit. You're talking about.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
All the different people involved in the facilitate here at Beckmann,
but for Frozen Zoo, because I'm sometimes they may be
listeners have no idea.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
What it is.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Could you describe it a little bit, especially for all
the kids that are listening right now, Like, what is
the frozen Zoo?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
And it's here at the Safari Park, but it's not really.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Like going and checking out the gorillas or maybe a
cassow area.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right, it's a little bit different. So what is it exactly?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
You're exactly right, it's really different, and people shouldn't feel
surprised that they don't know about it.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
It's amazing. It's been around fifty years and it's here
at the park, right, and it's.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Here in San Diego at the Safari Park, and very
few people know about it, even though it's been around
fifty years.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
But yes, it's the largest collection of its kind.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
So we have skin cells and gam meat and more
recently stem cells, and also the first plant in the
frozen Zoo. They're all frozen in a living state. They're
kind of in like a suspended animation. We put them
in there. They can stay there for years, and then
we could also pull out a vial of the skin
cells and grow them again and make more, just like
(03:44):
a plant if you subclone your plant, you know, if
you take little pieces off the plant and grow more.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Okay, it's kind of like that, like a succulent or something.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I do want to say real quick though, when you
say frozen zoo and there's suspended animation, because It's not
just like putting something in your freezer at home. Right,
The temperatures and the process is very different, which we'll
get into all those details in a bit, but I
just want to make sure we do put that in
our mind. As far as the frozen Zoo keeps things
at a temperature of.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Around minus three hundred and twenty degrees faring, that's just.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
A little bit cold. Colder anywhere else on the planet,
I would assayd that's about minus three hundred.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Why why does it have to be so cold?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Well, as cells sit around, if they're not kept frozen,
very very very cold, the DNA will begin to degrade,
so they would deteriorate over time, and we need them
to be living and vital, as vital as they were
when we put them in there. Wow, so this kind
of stops their metabolism.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
It reminds me like a sci fi movie for me,
but actual science fact.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And then yeah, earlier, I mean you were talking plants,
you were talking gam meats as well.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
It makes me think of like working at the Safari
Park as an example, this the.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Bird department, mammals or just a hord of culture. So
is it kind of like that.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
You have different teams at the Frozen Zoo that focused
on different things, right, there's different specialties.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
So the team that freezes the skin cells, we don't
know how to freeze Gammy. It's an entirely different animal
so to speak. Yeah, plants are entirely different from that.
We have a stem cell team. They take the skin
cells and they reprogram them into stem cells and then
those are added to the frozen.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Back it up a little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So this might be silly questions, but I need can
you describe Gammy?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
What is that exactly? For people who don't know.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Right, good question.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Gam Meats are sperm and eggs, the material that creates
a new life.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And your team that you work a lot with is
working with skin cell.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
You said, my team works with skin cells.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And that's what doctor Banershka, who started the Frozen Zoo
fifty years ago, he started with the skin cells.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
You know how with the zoo they say it began
with a roar.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, Grex the lions.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
You're right, the Frozen Zoo, I like to say it
began with a cell. It's and it was a skin cell,
but later came sperm and egg, later came stem cells,
and now just this year plants plants.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And we talked last season about the oak trees, right
and why it was so different and unique to finally
have plants in the system as well for the frozen Zoo.
So that's cool that, I mean, the connection from that
conversation we had with Christy last season about the oak tree.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But also I'm wondering, like why skin cell, you know, like,
of all the body parts of an animal, Like why
start with that.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Yeah, that's a great question, and really we can use
other parts. Most of the samples are collected after the
animal dies post mortem. Oh okay, so it can be skin.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
For birds, we prefer eye and trachea.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
For amphibians, we like foot or tongue, parts of the
body that have to regenerate the cells quickly.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Oh, so they're more apt to regenerate for you in
the lab there exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I I just learned that today. I'm learning a lot today,
by the way. That's interesting. They have to be so
specific on the animal.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
And the fancy word for skin cell is fiberblast, and
so really what we're getting out of any of the
tissues eye, trachia, foot, tongue, skin is fiberglast cells.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'm guessing that over the fifty years, it wasn't just
like we know exactly what kind of cells are best.
A lot of trial and error throughout this process over
the fifty years to find out that for the reptiles
it's foot and tongue, for the birds, trachia, eye, for
mammals skin, I would assume.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Correct, exactly. That's what my team is doing. Every day.
They're working with sometimes new species. Sometimes we're adding new
species to the Frozen Zoo every week, and so we're
learning new things.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
It began only.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
With mammals, starting with mammals, just mammals, because you can
imagine first techniques were worked out on humans, right, and
then so when doctor Banershka came along, he said, you know,
this is a new technology. We can do it for animals.
And when the animals die, we have the pathology department
right here. It's easy to go collect a biopsy and
(07:51):
culture the cells. And we learned a lot how to
do it. And then it was years later that we
started adding bird cells and then find reptiles and most
recently amphibians.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And earlier you were saying it's the largest amount of
genetic materials, that's the way to phrase it in the world.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
What's special about this collection again is that it's living cells,
and so this is the largest living cell and gammy
collection anywhere in the world right now, we have over
eleven five hundred individuals and about thirteen hundred species and subspecies.
And to put that in perspective, and you guys have
seen the room. We're not in the room, but it's
a pretty small room. Yeah right, Yeah, and it actually
(08:31):
holds nearly twice the number of animals that are at
the zoo and the Safari Park combined, combine, because we're
just storing little vials of cells, and so we can
really put a lot of material in there, which, as
people have probably heard in other podcasts, that stores all
this genetic diversity of all these animals that have passed on.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, she said that word again.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And I was listening to the last episode of last
season with doctor Oliver Wrder, you know, and it reminded
me of that.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And he's kind of stressed.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Like back in the day, you know, the idea of
like genetic diversity wasn't really like a common thought process.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
You know, maybe we used.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Relatives a little closer depending on the species, to try
to reproduce and to help out with those numbers. But
there were some genetic issues that were happening, and it
was that contup woide diversity is so important kind of
the main reason why we have this, wouldn't you say,
I mean to keep that diversity of genetic material for
different species.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Is that an.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Idea one of the reasons.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
It's really it's so vast the uses for this, it's
kind of mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Back to some of the other podcasts, you learned that
he started it for chromosomes.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, so doctor.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Bernershka's first thought was to study the chromosomes of these cells.
You need living dividing cells to study the chromosomes. They
were learning so much. They were finding that there were
animals the munchak had six or seven chromosomes, depending if
you're male or female.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Oh that's right, Yeah, why did you know that?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And then another one that was similar, that looked almost
the same. It had forty six chromosomes. And the rhino
chromosome number wasn't known at the time, right, which is
a really high number, eighty two or eighty four depending.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
On the species.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I remember horses, cheap domestic horse versus the two or
three chroma that was wild.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Right, And back to the mule.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
You know, how do you get a mule while it
is a donkey cross with a horse and that creates
a mule which is infertiles. So it's partly for the
curiosity and understanding, but it's also avoiding mistakes like hybrids.
You know, what do we need to know about this
animal to help it thrive in the future. Well, we
definitely don't want to cross breed different species, and sometimes
(10:31):
they look alike and the only way to tell the
difference is through their chromosomes.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah. Wow, Well, I want to jump back in time.
We've covered a lot so far sort of as an
intro to all this, and there's other stuff we're going
to dive into more like how things are stored. We're
gonna look at the vials and all that stuff. But
I want to hear obviously, I mean, our listeners can
figure this out. You know a lot about the Frozen
Zoo because you have a rich history here along the
(10:55):
fifty years of the Frozen Zoo. When did you first
start and what was your first position here or even
a not official position from what I understand, right, it
was more of a college situation.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It was nineteen eighty seven and I was hired on
a one year grant. I was working in biotech here
in San Diego. It was a hub for biotechnology, and
I actually going to even further back, I actually started
in human cytogenetics, that means cell genetics. So I was
studying human chromosomes because I got interested in it in
high school from my high school teacher.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
High school high school science.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
I thought it was the best thing ever.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
And I didn't really realize I would have well, certainly
not this career, but I knew there was a career
in studying human chromosomes. So anyway, I had to divert
to a biotech for a little. While I was studying cancer,
we were looking for cures for cancer, and it involved
looking at cells that had both mouse and human chromosomes
in a way to understand how the cancer was working.
(12:00):
So that was my experience. But I only knew human
chromosomes and I didn't know mouse chromosomes. And I thought, well,
I know there's a genetic lab here in San Diego
at the Zoo. I knew about it because even back
then in my world it was sort of famous.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Oh, it was already.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It's a it's running around this guy at the Sandy
the Safari Park doing something with creators out there, right because.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
It was chromosomes. Not everybody knew about it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But in the.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Chromosome world, like, wow, they do animal, I mean, how
do you do other mammals other than human? And I thought, well,
they'll teach me. Maybe I can go volunteer there. I
hope that my knowledge, maybe I could help them and
they'll teach me mouse so that I can understand what
I'm doing with my chromosomes in the cancer studies. So
I came for this interview and it was the hardest
(12:43):
interview of my life. I thought I was interviewing for
a volunteer job. And at the end of it they
offered me a job, a one year grant, big pay cut.
Was I willing to do that? The goal was my
job would be my mission, should I choose to accept it,
was to figure out why rhinos cells don't grow very
well and figure out the chromosome number of some of
(13:06):
the rhinos. Nobody knew the chromosome number of Sumatran rhinos,
and they couldn't figure it out if they couldn't get
cells to grow better, So, you know, do I.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Want to just drop?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Also jumping into rhino, but yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Drop a great job.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
I was young and I said absolutely, of course I
want to do that.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
And so that was about thirty eight years ago.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
So what I was was just basically a technician, and
I was working under Arlene Kumamoto, who doctor Banershka and
Arlene had come from UCSD together when he started the
Frozen Zoo. She was the first technician and the first
curator of the Frozen Zoo, and I'm the second curator
of the zoo in fifty years.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Well, so in that time of you starting there, Arlene's
the curator. You're on a team of only a few
of you.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Right, was the only technician because she was technically a
higher position than that, and it was to permanent position.
So there really was no permanent technician at the time.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So when your grant was over, what happened?
Speaker 5 (14:06):
They somehow found some money and said can we kind
of hang out? Well, we try to find money, and
I'm sure it was so fun. It was just amazing.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
I've been here ever since. And then Arlene died suddenly
and tragically of cancer.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
And so it was a rapid shift.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
I was with her fifteen years and I didn't learn
enough from her in those fifteen years, but my background
helped a lot. Now we're teaching it to the next generation.
And so what doctor Banershka taught Arlene taught me and
on to the next generation. And so it's this, it's
not really anything you can go to school for. It's
better learned from somebody who knows how to do it
(14:43):
at your education level doesn't really matter. It's a new skill.
Not very many people do this anywhere in the world, right,
can't just.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Go get a degree in this sort of thing. So
few people are doing it, and so few locations to
do it in.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Right, what an exciting time.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Right actually remind me even my background here, I was
able to work here at a very young age and
learn a lot on the.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Job as well.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And you know, as you're speaking, I'm thinking about like
what the past looked like for you, now what the
future looks like for you.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And again back to that word diversity.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
And you know, at the time when I started younger
in wildlife care, it was kind of like very male
centric kind of community. Now, but then we saw more diversity,
people of color, women, all sorts of people of all
walks of life coming into these areas. I'm curious, was
it a similar kind of experience for you. Do you
see from the past and now what you see as
for as diversity and representation of people in science?
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Well, you're right, for some reason, there are more women
in science in general. Oh yeah, at least, well, okay,
in my world, in the chromosome world, there were a
lot of women. I think it's a very detailed, fine
tuned thing with manipulating fingers, very small fingers, and growing cells.
You grow cells in the human world too. But the
interesting thing about our group over the fifty years, most
(15:55):
of the time, I would say ninety percent of the
people growing sales were women.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Over the years, and right now the team there's just
five of us in the skin cell group and all women.
And then the Gammat team is also all women.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, kudos, that's awesome. Now, that's really great.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
It makes me excited because you know, a lot of times,
back to the last episode, a lot of school groups
come to Beckman.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I've been a part of some of them.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Plant to Seed is another one we bring kids from
inter city communities, you know, here in San Diego County,
and I grew up here in Escandieto, and I love
seeing especially you know, the Latino community and little girls
particularly can come here and see things that are possible
for them in the future, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So I love that we have that offer here at Beckman.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
All right, we've spoken to the Plant to Seed group
and inspires them.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
It was amazing. No, thank you for that. That's great.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
How excited are you about the work that's being done
here at Beckman And what do you see in the future.
I mean, I know that's a really loaded question, but
there's so much unknown going on in science.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Wouldn't you say, Oh, there's so much still to be discovered.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
It's exciting all the time.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
When I was in human it was interesting wise in
the human world we call it, but it was every
single day, it was forty six chromosome, same individuals.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Here every single day.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
We're getting different species and we don't know what's coming in.
We get samples from zoos all around the United States.
It's more difficult to get samples to us from outside
of the US because it has to cross borders. There's
permits if there's any delay the cells start today. We
have to get everything quickly. Oh okay, okay, but today,
for example, two of our team members and and Katie
(17:24):
froze the very first at Water's Prairie chicken.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Oh really, and that's the news.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, that's I mean, I think the word chicken. Most
people are like a big yell about chicken. But I'm
just saying, I'm just saying, that's an a dangerous species.
That's really important.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
It is, and we've been collaborating with US Fish and
Wildlife on this, and years ago we were talking about this.
They were saying there's this real need to bank this species.
And then what happened is a very genetically valuable animal died.
And they knew of us, they knew our program, they
were prepared, they knew the method to.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Quickly get us the tissue.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Oh, the ladies in the labs set up the tissues,
and about four weeks later there are enough cells to
add to the frozen zoo and so that becomes a
new species, and we're saving the genetic diversity of that
individual that died.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Otherwise it's lost.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
We can't ever go back and say, oh, we should
have gotten that animal or you know, wouldn't it be
nice if we had cells of a dodo or a
Tasmanian tiger or a passenger pigeon. But we can't go
backwards in time. We have to bank now with the
future in mind.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, having the foresight for it, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You know, since you mentioned the fact that your team
grew more cells. That took four weeks. And again, I
think for someone listening it might be like, wait, what
so we have here in front of us?
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, how things are banked once they have grown. But
let's talk first before I want to describe this and
get into what this is here in front of us.
But when the cell sample shows up, you're not just
throwing that in the freezer. There's a whole process that
everyone has to go through a quick step by step.
What is it that your team has to jump into
when those prey chicken cells show up?
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Right, So we get it in a small container with
growth media so it keeps it moist, it keeps it
from drying out. So anything that would kill the cells
ends what we're trying to do. We need live cell
So if you think of a leaf of lettuce, it's
nice and crisp and taught, and those cells are alive.
If it gets dehydrated, it wilts, If it gets bacteria,
it wilts. All these things. Just a high amount of heat,
(19:24):
it would start to weild. That means the cells are dying,
if you think of it like that. So this comes
in a little vial keeping it moist. It has antibiotics
so it doesn't get contaminated, and.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
We get it quickly, take it into the lab.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Everything's done steraily so that we don't get outside organisms
into our cells, which would destroy it. So it goes
into the lab. They dice it really small into little pieces.
We add an enzyme called collagenase. It digests the collagen
around the cells.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
So real quick. I know what that means. But when
we sure our audience knows. It comes in as a
very small sample. The sample size is so they dice
it up first into small all our pieces of the
enzyme you said digestive and basically means breaks down certain proteins.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Correct, yep, right, it breaks down the collagen that's holding
the cells together. You know, our skin is all collagen.
You know, as we age and they say, oh, you're
losing collagen, you're losing elasticity in your skin.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, so this helps basically individualize and bring the cells
apart from other cells, so you can get an eye
on those individuals better.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Right, Okay, So we digest it and the cells are
coming loose than we take that and we put the digesting,
falling apart tissue in a flask, which is a little
clear plastic container that's sterile, okay, and the cells will
begin in a growth media has all the nutrients and enzymes,
kind of cell soup, everything they need to grow and thrive.
So the cells they're adherent. Not all cells are adherent.
(20:44):
It means they stick to the bottom of the flask.
Some cells are non adherent. They're floating. And the cancer
cells I worked with were non adherent. That's another difficult
The best these are adherent. They attached to the bottom.
We can look at them under the microscope. We can
watch them grow and divide, so we know when there's
more and we want the bottom of the flask to
become wall to wall with cells. The word for that
(21:06):
is a really weird word called confluent again, confluent confluid.
I think rivers are confluent and cells can be confluent,
but there's not many things that are described as conflict,
but as wall to wall packed with cells. And as
they grow there and one flask becomes packed with cells,
we put an enzyme on again to make them become
de attached from the bottom of the flask, and we
(21:27):
can move half of them into another flask.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
And this is how we grow it.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
We go from one flask to two to four, and
then when we get to four, we have enough cells
to add to the frozen zoo.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Why is it important to have at least that many
cells before putting them in the frozen zoo?
Speaker 5 (21:42):
So the number you could decide whatever you want.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
But what we hit upon in history it all the
way back pretty much to our lane, was we thought
we would freeze nine vials overall, so four would stay
here at the Beckmann Center. Four go to our duplicate collection,
which is exactly the same. Because you don't want all
your eggs in one basket, correct, right, what happens if
there was a fire or an earthquake, something we couldn't control,
(22:06):
we would have half the collection somewhere else. The ninth
file is pulled, doesn't get into the frozen zoo. We
freeze it briefly, and then we put it in another
flask and we can use it to look at the chromosomes.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
Ah, cool, and check the We call it viability. How
well did the cells freeze?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Sure, we can freeze, and we can throw them in
there and say we froze them, but they have to
come back out alive or it doesn't matter. It's science science,
And I didn't mention like you said, you can't just
throw something into the freezer and expect it would come
back out alive. What we have to do is add
a reagent called dimethyl sulfoxide or dmso it prevents ice
(22:47):
crystals from forming in the cells. So picture of cell
and it's freezing. Yet it makes it freeze softly, kind
of like a popsicle, like a not real hard like
an ice cube.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Frozen, yeah, frozen gelny.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
You know, I was up really ate last night and
I wanted a popsicle, but there was this one with
a lot of frost fighting and I didn't want to
eat it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Well, if you probably.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
It's similar, I mean it's.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
I mean a popsicle doesn't have live cells if you
think back to the life.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Otherwise I'm not eating it.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Right, it's a cryo protecting. It's like an anti freeze.
So it is freezing, but it's not freezing rocks solid
with ice crystals because ice crystal is sharp, it pierces
the cell membrane that kills the cell.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So this is legitimately a frozen suspended animation. You're not
freezing to the point of hard rock. You're keeping a
soft enough that those cells don't burst, break or tear.
And then you bring that one vial, that ninth file
back out, just a double check that all the systems
are working well. Yeah, and then it's viable.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Right, we look at it under the microscope. We say, oh, look,
they did attach again. They did it here. They are
dividing again, and then we can grow them up further.
They're getting older. Each time they divide, they get older,
just like our cells.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Oh I didn't think about that. If you think.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Yeah, if you think about it, our skin looks the
way it does because our cells have divided over and
over and over compared to a baby. But we can
grow it up again and we give a section of that.
We give a number of those cells to the DNA group,
who then freezes it in a non living manner. But
that can also be used for other people. Requesting cells.
(24:25):
If they don't need living dividing cells, will give them
the DNA material instead and protect As curator. I need
to be sure that we keep a certain amount of
the live cells back in the collection for future uses,
because you know, what's the most important use today? And
then I have to think about could there be something
more important in the future that people would say, wait,
(24:47):
why did you use it all up on that whatever
it was studying chromosomes. We need to bank some. We
use it now and we bank some for the future.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Wow, all right, I have to ask because I do
want to get again into these containers here how this
all works, so we can talk more about that for
our audience. Thirty eight years of doing this, clearly thousands
upon thousands of individuals gotten into plants, got some birds,
got some retails for you personally, what has been the
most like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this is
here at the laugh or did we get to freeze
(25:17):
this one? Has there been one, whether it's an individual
or a species or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I can only pick one.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Okay, one from your top ten comes up right away
when he said, well, there's.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
So many, because it has been a lot of years,
and I've been so fortunate to work on so many things,
So beginning with having my job being figured out how
to make rhino cells grow better, I got to work
with Sumatran rhino and northern white rhino and I was
actually successful and they're one of our best growing cells.
Today we don't worry about growing rhinos. So it's like
we got a rhino sample, it's going to work. We have,
(25:49):
you know, probably ninety nine percent success.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Right, do you like to look back? You walk past
the rhinol? I did that, like.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Nola, you know, before I die, They got samples the
Northern white rude.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
She was a northern white rhino that lived here in
the Safari apart for many years in case our listeners
didn't know, and everyone loved her. And it just reminds
me how great this place is, you know, the Safari Park,
all the nuances, guests, wildlife care, security, chafts, science, you know,
it's great and it's wonderful that guests can come visitors
here and know that these things are happening, these amazing
nuances of science are happening right here in Backman at
(26:22):
the Safari Park.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And then we branch out everywhere we have hubs that
San diego Zo Wildlife Alliance works with, and one of
our hubs is Hawaii and the endangered bird population there right. Yes,
that goes back to probably, I don't know that this
could ever happen again. It has to stand out as
one of my most memorable oh yeah samples I set
up was it's a Hawaiian honey creeper called the Yes
(26:46):
and they.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Live in Hawaii. They thought it was extinct.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
They rediscovered just a few individuals and they were making
a plan for how to try to bring them together
so that we could help them in reproduction and save
the species, kind of like we did with California condor. However,
there weren't enough individuals and they were only ever able
to bring the one male into the managed care program,
(27:11):
and he was older, and then we figured he was
going to die fairly soon, and he did. And they
wanted people to grow cells. And they said, we're going
to send you tissue and you need to grow the cells.
And I said, yeah, except we don't grow birds yet.
It was too early. It was two thousand and four.
I could grow feathers if feathers were growing in and
(27:31):
I said, if this bird doesn't have growing feathers. I
don't know how to grow a bird. So I begged
that they would send it to two different locations and
they said, okay, we'll look into that. And then they
came back and said, there is no other location that
does this.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
You have to do it.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
And then it was Thanksgiving weekend and there was a
team of people to receive the bird and went into
pathology and they were able to extract the eye. Because
I didn't know at the time, we didn't know I
in trachia. I never never thought of trachia. I tried
of her heart, kidney's spleen skin, which rarely grows on birds.
And I because of the past knowledge all the way
(28:07):
back to Arlene and doctor Banershka. Arlene had grown the
cornea of a whale, and I thought, well, maybe I
can grow the cornea. But the eye was the size
of a blueberry, and I couldn't really extract out the cornea.
So I kind of cut it in half and used
my very scientific words of front of eye and back
of eye and set up two different cultures.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
And back of eye grew.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
But the torture waiting for that to grow, but it did.
Eventually in four weeks, we ended up adding it to
the Frozen Zoo and it became the first selling ever
anywhere in the world of an extinct species because we
don't have Dodo cells or Tasmania chi passenger pigeon. And
then what that reminds us is the other value of
(28:50):
the Frozen Zoo. We need to be banking these animals now,
not when it's the last one that's pressure. If that
didn't work, we lost the ability to look at foul chromosomes,
the Fulei genome. We can't bring that species back from
one cell line, but we can learn so much more
about it just by studying living cells.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Then that knowledge can apply to future species possibly. Yeah. Right,
And so I want to ask real quick because you
mentioned we haven't done birds yet. So describe the situation.
You chop up the cells, you add the enzymes, you know,
all those things you're looking for. I'm guessing different temperatures,
different chemicals, different amounts of the enzymes. These are all
things I have to play and you have to learn
(29:30):
along the way what the right steps are for each mammals, birds, reptiles,
et cetera. Or is there a different reason why you're like, ah, bird,
I'm not ready yet.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
No, you're right, You're right. Temperature is one of the
biggest things. And they all grow in incubators. That four
weeks I was talking about. They're in an incubator, and
the technicians tend to, like the wildlife care specialists, they
have to go in every day and like look at
the cells and say, Okay, this one needs something else,
this one's happy, this one's not happy.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
What do I feed it?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
We get into a rhythm or we can kind of tell.
But some of them are different, and each time some
of them have just aren't working. We have to figure
something out. The birds actually grow at forty degrees celsius,
and mammals grow at thirty seven degrees, reptiles at thirty three.
Amphibians either room temperature or twenty seven. So it's very different.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, So they kind of go in groups.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
Though if they're related to each other, they behave similarly.
So carnivores we can kind of treat with the same media.
They take the same media, which is different from the
media that the gazelle groups take. So we have to
know all these things, and then we have to know
things too. For example, dolphins we learned to grow at
thirty seven degrees and whales grow at thirty three. But
(30:39):
then there are some things that are called whale, like
killer whale, that are actually a dolphin.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Oh yeah, So we have to know our taxonomy or
the how things are related, what groups they rely on commons.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
It kind of makes me think of my cookbook back home.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
You know, it kind of grows. You know, my mom's
way of making it. The mile might be different than
my way, and you have a little bit here and there.
But I know it's a silly way of describing it.
But you know you're recording all these subtle nuances and
variation depending on the species and the group or the family,
depending on what you're doing in the situation, just constantly
adding more or changing more.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Right, It's just like that.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And we consult with each other every day, you know,
if it's something new. Katie's growing a European fire salamander
and she just froze. It's one of the new species
this year. Wow, And we have never gotten a salamander
to work. So I would go look at it whenever
she wanted a second opinion, And you know, what do
you think I should do Is it ready to go
to the.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Next flask or is it not?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
What do I do?
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Because it's scary, you know, and there's no written answer.
You're building on past knowledge and then you share that
knowledge with the rest of the team and the scientists
of the future, the technicians.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
The future, interesting arguments.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
It's scary, but it's exciting to you write what you're
trying to do, but the unknown, Like how super exciting
is that? Like modern day superheroes that you guys are doing, so,
I mean really really great work, you know, and we
talked earlier. It's a fiftieth anniversary of the Frozen Zoo
and all these amazing things that I'm learning that we do.
I had no idea that nuances here makes me think, like,
what's going to happen fifty years from now? You know,
(32:03):
we only can do here at Backmant the Safari Park
in the Alliance and all this conservation work.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
I know, isn't it fun to think of? I mean,
Bnershka could never have imagined where this went.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
I mean he sort of did.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
He predicted cloning, but all the way the technology grew
and one we can't really probably even guess, but there
are things we know that we want to do. Right now,
we're growing only vertebrates, things with the backbone, birds, mammals, reptiles,
and fabians.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Fish.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Yeah, one thing my team is looking at. We want
to branch into invertebrates. The insects, Yeah, butterflies, monarch butterflies
are in trouble. The Lord Howse stick insect, which is
here at SDZWA.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yeah, you actually can see them at Wildlife Explorers based Canto.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Another unique species and.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
They're very endangered. There's only a few populations.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
We'd like to try to learn how to bank those,
which is completely different. And then another thing I think
you've covered in another podcast. But the big thing we're
trying to do is share this knowledge and these techniques
with people around the world because, as I mentioned, it's
too hard to get the samples here quickly. We can't
do everything. We're at capacity all the time. We're having
to make hard decisions. There's too many to grow at once.
(33:09):
Which one could we get another time if the animal
hasn't died, let's pass on that one. We've got to
do the ones that died, we have no more chance
to get those. But we're making decisions all the time.
It would be better if we could grow this where
people all around the world are helping with the effort
to biobank all these endangered species. And so we're running
a workshop this year our team for one full week.
Speaker 5 (33:32):
We're going to continue to keep our sales fed, but
we're going to train eight participants from around the globe.
That's awesome in these methods.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
They won't learn it in one week, but we'll be
there to help them along the way. They can write
and ask us questions and we will probably go to
their countries once they're set up and help them work
out the little details. So this way, if an animal dies,
and think of the biodiversity these other countries that we
don't have in the frozen zoo that will never be
able to or there might be permit issues where they
(34:02):
aren't allowed to leave the country. So this way, and
then it can be a network where we all could
call on each other. You know, this actually happened. There
was a rare dolphin that was about to die and
they were calling us and it was near Germany, and
I said, it's not going to work for us to
get there. However, we had trained someone. We've run these
courses before and one of the people we trained from
Germany he was up and running. So I called him
(34:24):
and I said, hey, could you get to this dolphin
in time?
Speaker 5 (34:26):
And if you have any questions will help.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
But anyway, we had that tiny network is a network
of just a couple in place. Now we want this
huge network where we have people spread all throughout the
globe so that we can collect all the spaces.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
It really speaks to the value of working together, working
with other organizations, working with the little individuals around the world,
instead of trying to go no, no, it's all ours.
We're doing the best job ever and you can't touch
it. It really goes to what we've always talked about with
the San Diego Zoo ands Fire Park, being partners with
other zeos around the world and here in the US.
It's not about which one's better or best. It's about
we have a common goal, and that's to really get
(35:01):
all life to thrive and help with these species around
the world. And having this network in place, and the
fact that you're hosting people from another different countries to
get this even further out there, so awesome, so very awesome.
I love that.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
The funny thing is we've actually published all our methods,
including where we buy our reagents, the vendors, everything, the
catalog numbers. We've published it in a book. But it's
not that easy. It's not the cookbook. Going back to
your cook you could follow a recipe, but it's not
the same as if your grandmother gave you those little.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Different right.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I really don't follow the recipe. That's but that's to
your point.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I kind of go on the vibe or I see
well my mom or my appolitea the and I kind
of go that route, you know, that little sprinkle whatever
that's fight yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Even like you were saying too, they call you in
to get eyes on that salamanders to thoseelves because it's like, well,
sometimes how it looks, or what it's doing, or where
it's in the process, and the timing of those aspects
as well. You can't really get that skill in a book,
but you can help support other people to learn those
skills and get up to those.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Speeds and think about I think the important part is
teaching how you look at it. That's what I've been
teaching more lately. I'm making this decision based on what
I see here. So back to your cooking. You know,
if bread should rise, you add yeast and the bread
should rise.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Unfortunately I'm not a good cook and I don't beg bread.
But it's you know, if the humidity changes or something
I might effected how it rises. And then that's an
experience passed down a long time. Or your grandmother could
say I've seen this happen last time we had them
onsoon and then you pass on that I have a.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Little this and said, you know, and it comes right off.
You know, Oh this is exciting. I'm curious to you know,
for the kids that are listening, the little mini scientists
right now on their way to school, like do you
have any like words of wisdom for them or any
kind of encouragement if they're thinking like do I want
to be a scientist or maybe I should go this
rout instead?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
What would you say?
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, well, I think it's really important a career. You
have it for a long time, hopefully before my job
here eight years. All my jobs were one and a
half years and I just wasn't passionate about them, and
it was a job and it was work. Once I
got here, it hasn't felt like work. It's just fun.
And I think it's really important if you're going to
(37:14):
be in a career for decades to do something you love.
So follow what your passion is and then explore reach out.
You know, I would have never ended up here if
not for trying to volunteer here. I would have never
thought I could have a job in the Frozen Zoo
Lab at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. But doing what
I loved, working with chromosomes and cells and animals.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
I always loved working with animals.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
It led me to this, just by exploring everything you
like and then sometimes you'll find something you don't like
along the way.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
Learn from that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, exactly, it's still learning either way.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
That's great advice.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I'm always kind of saying the same thing, just like,
find what you love and make a job out of
it and you're golden.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
We wait, wait, wait before we wrap up, totally forgot
we're running along, and thank you for a little extra time.
Oh yes, we have in front of us. So anybody
who is not watching this on video eventually go on YouTube.
But right now, the best I can compare this to
somebody my age. So we're talking gen x ish, right, Okay,
remember those CD towers and those towers it's about that size,
(38:17):
about two and a half almost three, But it's not
a CD tower. This is how things are stored in
the Frozen Zoo. And like you mentioned, the Frozen Zoo
is a room and in that room we have how
many large stainless steel containers roughly about seven, so about
seven there's liquid nitrogen going through the system to keep
everything of that sub three hundred degrees or whatever you use.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
It is truly liquid. I mean it says liquid nitrogen,
but it's a liquid.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
It's a clean it's so cold it's liquid.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Open it up, it just comes.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah. So you know, everyone always compared to dress Park
because dress Park was using the real idea of cryogenically
frozen things. You have that myst that comes out. I've
been in there before, you've opened them up. You've pulled
one of these towers out, can you hear already? The
temperature starts to change on the metals and it kind
of makes a little bit of noise and you pull
out from the side. Then one of these trays that again,
if you're just stacked maybe what three or four CDs.
(39:06):
It's about outsize totally.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Okay, So inside though, and it's not actual CDs. You
pull out this case again it's outside of like maybe
four CDs cases stacked. But then you open it up
and inside then are all these little vials. Now what
would be inside these vials if this was part of
the frozen zoo and you had just taken it out
of one of the freezers.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
Right, So the box, we're going to fill it eventually.
But what we do is we put member back to
the nine vials, four go in one location, forgo in
another location on a different power grid, and inside would
be the four vials. We color code the tops so
that we don't mix anything up. All the cells kind
of look alike. Okay, and then we aren't in bar
coding yet, so we actually handwrit on these and you
(39:46):
can pick one up, sure, and in it would be
these are just these are just props that we use
for our education.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Okay, what do you get? So I got oh, I
got a male condo door, California condo, Californic condor. And
then the date is nine June twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So that it's an actual day that that actual animal
with that.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
We call them KB numbers, which is a lab number.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
KB stands for Kurt Venershkakab number. And in it would
be a little pinkish ice ball if it was really
in the frozen zoo. And in that little ice ball
would be one to three million million living cells. Wow,
in the size of like your pinky fingertip.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
To each file. And so this California condo is all
these blue ones exactly, so millions of cells in each vial.
So for those who are not able to watch the video,
the vial is about as big around as maybe a
highlighter like a not a full highlighter pen, but like
maybe like an ink pen of some sort. And then
it's maybe and a half lender, yeah, inch and a
(40:43):
half or so in length, with a little blue cap
and it's sort of clear in color. So each case
and holds about how many total if we put.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Four in there, there's one hundred spots if we put
four from each animal. Okay, kids, do the math. Twenty
five animals and then thirteen in a tower.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
And you have how many towers in the.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Six times four twenty four? Yeah, so we can do
all that matter.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Then you have the seven different containers there, plus in
the mirrored collection elsewhere.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
Right, and the seven different containers. Though some are dedicated
to skin cells, some are dedicated to game eats. The
skin cells can live in the vapor of the nitrogen,
which is maybe ten degrees warmer the game eat cells,
sperm and eggs. They have to be submerged in the
liquid to stay at a true negative one hundred and
ninety six varies.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Even the height in theay.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
You have to bring the level of the liquid nitrogen
all the way to the top. So that's why they
have different containers than ours. They keep theirs full. Ours
are in mostly vapor, and then the plant cells and
the stem cells have their own tank.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Wow. Wow, that is fast, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Though?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Is there anything about the process that we haven't covered
yet that you want to make sure our audience knows
about it? We kind of cover everything here with the
tower and the cells and the freezing.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I think one thing that gets overlooked sometimes, and this
goes back to Arlene told me the story when the
frozen Zoo had about three hundred and fifty individuals, including
a whale. Really interesting things. Some of the animals. Ralph
Banershka talks about going to get with his dad. They
were banked in there, well, they were all in one tank.
There was a power failure. They lost every sample in there.
(42:18):
And she told me this story with this horrible look
in her eyes, and it really set into my memory
and my fear that this would happen. We can't have
this happen again. And I literally had nightmares after thought.
They divided into duplicate tanks, but they sat side by
side on the same power grid. If there was a
(42:38):
fire and earthquake, they were in the same location. And
so I was always having nightmares. And she finally said, Okay,
we got to stop your nightmares. We're going to move
this a fifteen minute walk away, and now it's about
a forty minute drive away. But I think what we
have to remember, besides growing the Frozen Zoo and adding
to it and all the things we're doing and sharing
it with people around the world, for all kinds of
studies that help humans and animals, mostly animals, but also
(43:01):
can benefit humans, what we have to think about too,
is that we can't ever lose any of these again
like they did.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
So part of my job is curator.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
The huge responsibility as part of it is we have
alarms on it, we have cameras on it, we get
woken up in the night, security can call us if
anything looks unusual.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
We've had a lot of close calls.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
And each time we do that, we put in another
safeguard so that that will.
Speaker 5 (43:26):
Never happen again. And so to have lasted.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Fifty years goes to this huge team of people who
have been caring for it, including security and the team
that grows the cells because it's so important to them.
And sometimes it's just anybody who's in the building walking
by and saying that doesn't look right, I'm going to
call on the call down list. So we want to
preserve what we have and we want to grow for
the future, and we want to share that's awesome and
(43:50):
get people doing this around the world so that it
isn't this.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Everything is here in San Diego.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
We want I get it good weather, we got Mexican food.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
I understand it. No, but that's a good call. I
mean again, global global work together, We're gonna make that
impact and protect everything.
Speaker 5 (44:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Okay, so now you can tell her thank you for
being here.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Friend, thank you. That was really really great.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
I learned so much. I have more questions too, but
that was super exciting. Thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
You really appreciate your time.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Sure come back anytime. Every day there's something new going
on and we can't predict what it is.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Good it sounds good.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Thank you man. I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
I mean in general idea of the Frozen Zoo, but
all those nuances, oh, in the different teams.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
The different parts.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I mean, she talked about bird eyes and whale eyes,
you know, and outside of the conversation it wouldn't made sense.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
But that was super engaging. Hopefully our listeners learned a
lot too.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, and what I really appreciate too was her story
and sharing in partnership with the Frozen Zoo. Story was
just absolutely fascinating, but sort of the underlying tone there,
or her story of studying something completely different, showed up
to do this one thing, oh yeah, and then had
no idea what the future held. It's that idea that
just be opened opportunities and maybe anybody out there thinking
about their career path or what they're doing, or not
(44:59):
feeling they're in the right thing, be curious, try something new.
If it doesn't work out, you've learned something, and if
it does work out, I mean, look, she's a curator
of the Frozen Zoo now, because she was like, yeah,
I'll take a chance on this.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
She saw that door she stepped right through. So that's
definitely something engaging and all the life here. Granted I
just got pooed on by hummingbirdens and we were talking,
but that's a part of it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
I'm sure you hate it every moment.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
It was great, but you know, it's all about the
visual components here and I'm really glad our listeners come
in and check it out.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
But it made me think back at that last episode in.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Education programs and kids can come here to the Beckam
in the center all the different science programs we offer.
So parents highly encourage you to check out our website
right sz Safari Park dot org and learn about some
of those programs of education that they can get involved
in here well.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
And like Lisa in our last episode mention, even if
you are looking for work in this type of world,
oh yeah, but you're not here in San Diego. There
are zoos around the nation, around the world that are
doing similar work that you can be a part of
and support your local zoo, go to the educational programs,
or be a scientist or whatever it may be. Yeah,
it's pretty exciting to think that we're a part of
this big network and helping everybody out.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
One hundred percent of my friend and you know, even
all that the humming bird's back. Oh a lot of
wildlife going here at the park today. But with that,
we're gonna talk about a very unique animal tea, right
and kind of tied into the fiftieth anniversary. We talked
about the past and now we're talking about the future,
but kind of see an animal up close in center
of some of the conservation work being done, right, Yeah,
the Shavalski's first rider or the Mongolian wild horse.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Which I'm super excited about.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
I know it's on a bird, but this animal is wicked,
beautiful and we get to talk to wildlife care team too,
and we got to say at the Safari Park, which
I think, Amanda, you're excited about it. See right, we'll
get our maybe on a on a bell hay or
something funny like that.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
You're not not allergic, are you?
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Man?
Speaker 1 (46:37):
You know she's not allergic. We're good.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
I am but.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
Get excited about it, right, So it's gonna be a
great transition.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, so I think the value of this next visit.
If you haven't listened already, check out the last episode
of last season with Doctor Oli Ryder. He talks more
about the pea horses we sometimes call them, and the
tie into the frozens. Who's supporting actual wildlife and so
we'll go out and see him. So if you haven't already,
be sure to subscribe and then tune in next time
when we get out in the wilds of the Safari
(47:06):
Park to see one of these beautiful horses up close
and personal. Can't wait now, markol and I'm Rick Schwartz.
Thanks for listening and watching. For more information about the
San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park, go
to SDZWA dot org. Amazing Wildlife is a production of iHeartRadio.
(47:29):
Our supervising producers are Nikia Swinton and Dylan Fagan, and
our sound designers are Sierra Spreen and Matt Russell. For
more shows from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, I'm Rick Schwartz.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
What is the s the world? A MARKA. Wentz.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of
wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal facts.
This podcast is in production with iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio and
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and international nonprofit conservation organization
which oversees the San Diego Zoo and kind of a
corner where we are now in the Safari Park.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I was getting distracted. He retired in direction I would do.
It's a very long series of words. We're in a
really unique spot, but you know, it reminds me of
our last episode.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
We learned a lot about education, right.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I had no idea we had so many programs not
only here at the Safari Park but also.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
At the San Diego Zoo.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
But there was another location that I forgot all about, the.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Conservation Corps which is based out of this area right here,
but they cover all sorts of things all over the
s FRII Park. But we are in the science hub
of the entire San Diego Zoo Wildlife Allion.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Percent and for our listeners, we're in the courtyard right now,
So you might hear a little bit of the waterfall
going on a beautiful fountain.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
And to your point, there's a lot of stuff going
on here.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
We hinted about something even the last episode of last season,
right about the Frozen Zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yes, we've mentioned it before and again this year, twenty
twenty five is the fiftieth anniversary of the Frozen Zoo,
and we learned from previous interviews it was sort of
a well, we should do this because it seems important.
We're not sure why. We're now starting to see a
lot of sort of for the lack of a better term,
fruit of all that labor and that curiosity of doctor
Bernursa doing things. But today we are talking again about
(01:35):
the Frozen Zoo. But we have a special guest, the
actual curator of the Frozen Zoo. Why don't you introduce
yourself with your official title too.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
By the way, Hi, I'm marlus Houck. I'm the curator
of the Frozen Zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
So in our world where we come from animal care,
curators looking over the managers and the teams who are
also then in charge of the animals, and they're also
looking at well, what animals do we have here? And
there working with other zoological facilities and conservation organizations, and
there's this big overseeing view of the population of animals, birds, mammals, reptiles,
(02:10):
all of it. Even plants. There's plant curators. What does
the curator of the frozen Zoo do.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
It's actually pretty similar to what you just describe, except
our animals or our little things.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
We're taking care of our cells.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh okay, it's slightly different.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Slightly different, but we're care taking them. They're alive, they're living,
they're growing, they're dividing cells, and the technicians have to
grow them for a number of weeks before they can
be added to the Frozen Zoo.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
And same as other.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Curators, we have to decide what we're bringing into the
collection and how to manage that.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Right right me. I actually wanted to go back a
little bit. You're talking about.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
All the different people involved in the facilitate here at Beckmann,
but for Frozen Zoo, because I'm sometimes they may be
listeners have no idea.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
What it is.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Could you describe it a little bit, especially for all
the kids that are listening right now, Like, what is
the frozen Zoo?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
And it's here at the Safari Park, but it's not really.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Like going and checking out the gorillas or maybe a
cassow area.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right, it's a little bit different. So what is it exactly?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
You're exactly right, it's really different, and people shouldn't feel
surprised that they don't know about it.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
It's amazing. It's been around fifty years and it's here
at the park, right, and it's.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Here in San Diego at the Safari Park, and very
few people know about it, even though it's been around
fifty years.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
But yes, it's the largest collection of its kind.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
So we have skin cells and gam meat and more
recently stem cells, and also the first plant in the
frozen Zoo. They're all frozen in a living state. They're
kind of in like a suspended animation. We put them
in there. They can stay there for years, and then
we could also pull out a vial of the skin
cells and grow them again and make more, just like
(03:44):
a plant if you subclone your plant, you know, if
you take little pieces off the plant and grow more.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Okay, it's kind of like that, like a succulent or something.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I do want to say real quick though, when you
say frozen zoo and there's suspended animation, because It's not
just like putting something in your freezer at home. Right,
The temperatures and the process is very different, which we'll
get into all those details in a bit, but I
just want to make sure we do put that in
our mind. As far as the frozen Zoo keeps things
at a temperature of.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Around minus three hundred and twenty degrees faring, that's just.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
A little bit cold. Colder anywhere else on the planet,
I would assayd that's about minus three hundred.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Why why does it have to be so cold?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Well, as cells sit around, if they're not kept frozen,
very very very cold, the DNA will begin to degrade,
so they would deteriorate over time, and we need them
to be living and vital, as vital as they were
when we put them in there. Wow, so this kind
of stops their metabolism.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
It reminds me like a sci fi movie for me,
but actual science fact.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And then yeah, earlier, I mean you were talking plants,
you were talking gam meats as well.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
It makes me think of like working at the Safari
Park as an example, this the.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Bird department, mammals or just a hord of culture. So
is it kind of like that.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
You have different teams at the Frozen Zoo that focused
on different things, right, there's different specialties.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
So the team that freezes the skin cells, we don't
know how to freeze Gammy. It's an entirely different animal
so to speak. Yeah, plants are entirely different from that.
We have a stem cell team. They take the skin
cells and they reprogram them into stem cells and then
those are added to the frozen.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Back it up a little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So this might be silly questions, but I need can
you describe Gammy?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
What is that exactly? For people who don't know.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Right, good question.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Gam Meats are sperm and eggs, the material that creates
a new life.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And your team that you work a lot with is
working with skin cell.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
You said, my team works with skin cells.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And that's what doctor Banershka, who started the Frozen Zoo
fifty years ago, he started with the skin cells.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
You know how with the zoo they say it began
with a roar.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, Grex the lions.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
You're right, the Frozen Zoo, I like to say it
began with a cell. It's and it was a skin cell,
but later came sperm and egg, later came stem cells,
and now just this year plants plants.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And we talked last season about the oak trees, right
and why it was so different and unique to finally
have plants in the system as well for the frozen Zoo.
So that's cool that, I mean, the connection from that
conversation we had with Christy last season about the oak tree.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But also I'm wondering, like why skin cell, you know, like,
of all the body parts of an animal, Like why
start with that.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Yeah, that's a great question, and really we can use
other parts. Most of the samples are collected after the
animal dies post mortem. Oh okay, so it can be skin.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
For birds, we prefer eye and trachea.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
For amphibians, we like foot or tongue, parts of the
body that have to regenerate the cells quickly.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Oh, so they're more apt to regenerate for you in
the lab there exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I I just learned that today. I'm learning a lot today,
by the way. That's interesting. They have to be so
specific on the animal.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
And the fancy word for skin cell is fiberblast, and
so really what we're getting out of any of the
tissues eye, trachia, foot, tongue, skin is fiberglast cells.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'm guessing that over the fifty years, it wasn't just
like we know exactly what kind of cells are best.
A lot of trial and error throughout this process over
the fifty years to find out that for the reptiles
it's foot and tongue, for the birds, trachia, eye, for
mammals skin, I would assume.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Correct, exactly. That's what my team is doing. Every day.
They're working with sometimes new species. Sometimes we're adding new
species to the Frozen Zoo every week, and so we're
learning new things.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
It began only.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
With mammals, starting with mammals, just mammals, because you can
imagine first techniques were worked out on humans, right, and
then so when doctor Banershka came along, he said, you know,
this is a new technology. We can do it for animals.
And when the animals die, we have the pathology department
right here. It's easy to go collect a biopsy and
(07:51):
culture the cells. And we learned a lot how to
do it. And then it was years later that we
started adding bird cells and then find reptiles and most
recently amphibians.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And earlier you were saying it's the largest amount of
genetic materials, that's the way to phrase it in the world.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
What's special about this collection again is that it's living cells,
and so this is the largest living cell and gammy
collection anywhere in the world right now, we have over
eleven five hundred individuals and about thirteen hundred species and subspecies.
And to put that in perspective, and you guys have
seen the room. We're not in the room, but it's
a pretty small room. Yeah right, Yeah, and it actually
(08:31):
holds nearly twice the number of animals that are at
the zoo and the Safari Park combined, combine, because we're
just storing little vials of cells, and so we can
really put a lot of material in there, which, as
people have probably heard in other podcasts, that stores all
this genetic diversity of all these animals that have passed on.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, she said that word again.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And I was listening to the last episode of last
season with doctor Oliver Wrder, you know, and it reminded
me of that.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And he's kind of stressed.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Like back in the day, you know, the idea of
like genetic diversity wasn't really like a common thought process.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
You know, maybe we used.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Relatives a little closer depending on the species, to try
to reproduce and to help out with those numbers. But
there were some genetic issues that were happening, and it
was that contup woide diversity is so important kind of
the main reason why we have this, wouldn't you say,
I mean to keep that diversity of genetic material for
different species.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Is that an.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Idea one of the reasons.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
It's really it's so vast the uses for this, it's
kind of mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Back to some of the other podcasts, you learned that
he started it for chromosomes.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, so doctor.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Bernershka's first thought was to study the chromosomes of these cells.
You need living dividing cells to study the chromosomes. They
were learning so much. They were finding that there were
animals the munchak had six or seven chromosomes, depending if
you're male or female.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Oh that's right, Yeah, why did you know that?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And then another one that was similar, that looked almost
the same. It had forty six chromosomes. And the rhino
chromosome number wasn't known at the time, right, which is
a really high number, eighty two or eighty four depending.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
On the species.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I remember horses, cheap domestic horse versus the two or
three chroma that was wild.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Right, And back to the mule.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
You know, how do you get a mule while it
is a donkey cross with a horse and that creates
a mule which is infertiles. So it's partly for the
curiosity and understanding, but it's also avoiding mistakes like hybrids.
You know, what do we need to know about this
animal to help it thrive in the future. Well, we
definitely don't want to cross breed different species, and sometimes
(10:31):
they look alike and the only way to tell the
difference is through their chromosomes.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah. Wow, Well, I want to jump back in time.
We've covered a lot so far sort of as an
intro to all this, and there's other stuff we're going
to dive into more like how things are stored. We're
gonna look at the vials and all that stuff. But
I want to hear obviously, I mean, our listeners can
figure this out. You know a lot about the Frozen
Zoo because you have a rich history here along the
(10:55):
fifty years of the Frozen Zoo. When did you first
start and what was your first position here or even
a not official position from what I understand, right, it
was more of a college situation.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It was nineteen eighty seven and I was hired on
a one year grant. I was working in biotech here
in San Diego. It was a hub for biotechnology, and
I actually going to even further back, I actually started
in human cytogenetics, that means cell genetics. So I was
studying human chromosomes because I got interested in it in
high school from my high school teacher.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
High school high school science.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
I thought it was the best thing ever.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
And I didn't really realize I would have well, certainly
not this career, but I knew there was a career
in studying human chromosomes. So anyway, I had to divert
to a biotech for a little. While I was studying cancer,
we were looking for cures for cancer, and it involved
looking at cells that had both mouse and human chromosomes
in a way to understand how the cancer was working.
(12:00):
So that was my experience. But I only knew human
chromosomes and I didn't know mouse chromosomes. And I thought, well,
I know there's a genetic lab here in San Diego
at the Zoo. I knew about it because even back
then in my world it was sort of famous.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Oh, it was already.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It's a it's running around this guy at the Sandy
the Safari Park doing something with creators out there, right because.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
It was chromosomes. Not everybody knew about it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But in the.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Chromosome world, like, wow, they do animal, I mean, how
do you do other mammals other than human? And I thought, well,
they'll teach me. Maybe I can go volunteer there. I
hope that my knowledge, maybe I could help them and
they'll teach me mouse so that I can understand what
I'm doing with my chromosomes in the cancer studies. So
I came for this interview and it was the hardest
(12:43):
interview of my life. I thought I was interviewing for
a volunteer job. And at the end of it they
offered me a job, a one year grant, big pay cut.
Was I willing to do that? The goal was my
job would be my mission, should I choose to accept it,
was to figure out why rhinos cells don't grow very
well and figure out the chromosome number of some of
(13:06):
the rhinos. Nobody knew the chromosome number of Sumatran rhinos,
and they couldn't figure it out if they couldn't get
cells to grow better, So, you know, do I.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Want to just drop?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Also jumping into rhino, but yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Drop a great job.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
I was young and I said absolutely, of course I
want to do that.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
And so that was about thirty eight years ago.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
So what I was was just basically a technician, and
I was working under Arlene Kumamoto, who doctor Banershka and
Arlene had come from UCSD together when he started the
Frozen Zoo. She was the first technician and the first
curator of the Frozen Zoo, and I'm the second curator
of the zoo in fifty years.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Well, so in that time of you starting there, Arlene's
the curator. You're on a team of only a few
of you.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Right, was the only technician because she was technically a
higher position than that, and it was to permanent position.
So there really was no permanent technician at the time.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So when your grant was over, what happened?
Speaker 5 (14:06):
They somehow found some money and said can we kind
of hang out? Well, we try to find money, and
I'm sure it was so fun. It was just amazing.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
I've been here ever since. And then Arlene died suddenly
and tragically of cancer.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
And so it was a rapid shift.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
I was with her fifteen years and I didn't learn
enough from her in those fifteen years, but my background
helped a lot. Now we're teaching it to the next generation.
And so what doctor Banershka taught Arlene taught me and
on to the next generation. And so it's this, it's
not really anything you can go to school for. It's
better learned from somebody who knows how to do it
(14:43):
at your education level doesn't really matter. It's a new skill.
Not very many people do this anywhere in the world, right,
can't just.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Go get a degree in this sort of thing. So
few people are doing it, and so few locations to
do it in.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Right, what an exciting time.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Right actually remind me even my background here, I was
able to work here at a very young age and
learn a lot on the.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Job as well.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And you know, as you're speaking, I'm thinking about like
what the past looked like for you, now what the
future looks like for you.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And again back to that word diversity.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
And you know, at the time when I started younger
in wildlife care, it was kind of like very male
centric kind of community. Now, but then we saw more diversity,
people of color, women, all sorts of people of all
walks of life coming into these areas. I'm curious, was
it a similar kind of experience for you. Do you
see from the past and now what you see as
for as diversity and representation of people in science?
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Well, you're right, for some reason, there are more women
in science in general. Oh yeah, at least, well, okay,
in my world, in the chromosome world, there were a
lot of women. I think it's a very detailed, fine
tuned thing with manipulating fingers, very small fingers, and growing cells.
You grow cells in the human world too. But the
interesting thing about our group over the fifty years, most
(15:55):
of the time, I would say ninety percent of the
people growing sales were women.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Over the years, and right now the team there's just
five of us in the skin cell group and all women.
And then the Gammat team is also all women.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, kudos, that's awesome. Now, that's really great.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
It makes me excited because you know, a lot of times,
back to the last episode, a lot of school groups
come to Beckman.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I've been a part of some of them.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Plant to Seed is another one we bring kids from
inter city communities, you know, here in San Diego County,
and I grew up here in Escandieto, and I love
seeing especially you know, the Latino community and little girls
particularly can come here and see things that are possible
for them in the future, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So I love that we have that offer here at Beckman.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
All right, we've spoken to the Plant to Seed group
and inspires them.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
It was amazing. No, thank you for that. That's great.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
How excited are you about the work that's being done
here at Beckman And what do you see in the future.
I mean, I know that's a really loaded question, but
there's so much unknown going on in science.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Wouldn't you say, Oh, there's so much still to be discovered.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
It's exciting all the time.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
When I was in human it was interesting wise in
the human world we call it, but it was every
single day, it was forty six chromosome, same individuals.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Here every single day.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
We're getting different species and we don't know what's coming in.
We get samples from zoos all around the United States.
It's more difficult to get samples to us from outside
of the US because it has to cross borders. There's
permits if there's any delay the cells start today. We
have to get everything quickly. Oh okay, okay, but today,
for example, two of our team members and and Katie
(17:24):
froze the very first at Water's Prairie chicken.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Oh really, and that's the news.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, that's I mean, I think the word chicken. Most
people are like a big yell about chicken. But I'm
just saying, I'm just saying, that's an a dangerous species.
That's really important.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
It is, and we've been collaborating with US Fish and
Wildlife on this, and years ago we were talking about this.
They were saying there's this real need to bank this species.
And then what happened is a very genetically valuable animal died.
And they knew of us, they knew our program, they
were prepared, they knew the method to.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Quickly get us the tissue.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Oh, the ladies in the labs set up the tissues,
and about four weeks later there are enough cells to
add to the frozen zoo and so that becomes a
new species, and we're saving the genetic diversity of that
individual that died.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Otherwise it's lost.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
We can't ever go back and say, oh, we should
have gotten that animal or you know, wouldn't it be
nice if we had cells of a dodo or a
Tasmanian tiger or a passenger pigeon. But we can't go
backwards in time. We have to bank now with the
future in mind.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, having the foresight for it, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You know, since you mentioned the fact that your team
grew more cells. That took four weeks. And again, I
think for someone listening it might be like, wait, what
so we have here in front of us?
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, how things are banked once they have grown. But
let's talk first before I want to describe this and
get into what this is here in front of us.
But when the cell sample shows up, you're not just
throwing that in the freezer. There's a whole process that
everyone has to go through a quick step by step.
What is it that your team has to jump into
when those prey chicken cells show up?
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Right, So we get it in a small container with
growth media so it keeps it moist, it keeps it
from drying out. So anything that would kill the cells
ends what we're trying to do. We need live cell
So if you think of a leaf of lettuce, it's
nice and crisp and taught, and those cells are alive.
If it gets dehydrated, it wilts, If it gets bacteria,
it wilts. All these things. Just a high amount of heat,
(19:24):
it would start to weild. That means the cells are dying,
if you think of it like that. So this comes
in a little vial keeping it moist. It has antibiotics
so it doesn't get contaminated, and.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
We get it quickly, take it into the lab.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Everything's done steraily so that we don't get outside organisms
into our cells, which would destroy it. So it goes
into the lab. They dice it really small into little pieces.
We add an enzyme called collagenase. It digests the collagen
around the cells.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
So real quick. I know what that means. But when
we sure our audience knows. It comes in as a
very small sample. The sample size is so they dice
it up first into small all our pieces of the
enzyme you said digestive and basically means breaks down certain proteins.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Correct, yep, right, it breaks down the collagen that's holding
the cells together. You know, our skin is all collagen.
You know, as we age and they say, oh, you're
losing collagen, you're losing elasticity in your skin.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, so this helps basically individualize and bring the cells
apart from other cells, so you can get an eye
on those individuals better.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Right, Okay, So we digest it and the cells are
coming loose than we take that and we put the digesting,
falling apart tissue in a flask, which is a little
clear plastic container that's sterile, okay, and the cells will
begin in a growth media has all the nutrients and enzymes,
kind of cell soup, everything they need to grow and thrive.
So the cells they're adherent. Not all cells are adherent.
(20:44):
It means they stick to the bottom of the flask.
Some cells are non adherent. They're floating. And the cancer
cells I worked with were non adherent. That's another difficult
The best these are adherent. They attached to the bottom.
We can look at them under the microscope. We can
watch them grow and divide, so we know when there's
more and we want the bottom of the flask to
become wall to wall with cells. The word for that
(21:06):
is a really weird word called confluent again, confluent confluid.
I think rivers are confluent and cells can be confluent,
but there's not many things that are described as conflict,
but as wall to wall packed with cells. And as
they grow there and one flask becomes packed with cells,
we put an enzyme on again to make them become
de attached from the bottom of the flask, and we
(21:27):
can move half of them into another flask.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
And this is how we grow it.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
We go from one flask to two to four, and
then when we get to four, we have enough cells
to add to the frozen zoo.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Why is it important to have at least that many
cells before putting them in the frozen zoo?
Speaker 5 (21:42):
So the number you could decide whatever you want.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
But what we hit upon in history it all the
way back pretty much to our lane, was we thought
we would freeze nine vials overall, so four would stay
here at the Beckmann Center. Four go to our duplicate collection,
which is exactly the same. Because you don't want all
your eggs in one basket, correct, right, what happens if
there was a fire or an earthquake, something we couldn't control,
(22:06):
we would have half the collection somewhere else. The ninth
file is pulled, doesn't get into the frozen zoo. We
freeze it briefly, and then we put it in another
flask and we can use it to look at the chromosomes.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
Ah, cool, and check the We call it viability. How
well did the cells freeze?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Sure, we can freeze, and we can throw them in
there and say we froze them, but they have to
come back out alive or it doesn't matter. It's science science,
And I didn't mention like you said, you can't just
throw something into the freezer and expect it would come
back out alive. What we have to do is add
a reagent called dimethyl sulfoxide or dmso it prevents ice
(22:47):
crystals from forming in the cells. So picture of cell
and it's freezing. Yet it makes it freeze softly, kind
of like a popsicle, like a not real hard like
an ice cube.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Frozen, yeah, frozen gelny.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
You know, I was up really ate last night and
I wanted a popsicle, but there was this one with
a lot of frost fighting and I didn't want to
eat it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Well, if you probably.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
It's similar, I mean it's.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
I mean a popsicle doesn't have live cells if you
think back to the life.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Otherwise I'm not eating it.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Right, it's a cryo protecting. It's like an anti freeze.
So it is freezing, but it's not freezing rocks solid
with ice crystals because ice crystal is sharp, it pierces
the cell membrane that kills the cell.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So this is legitimately a frozen suspended animation. You're not
freezing to the point of hard rock. You're keeping a
soft enough that those cells don't burst, break or tear.
And then you bring that one vial, that ninth file
back out, just a double check that all the systems
are working well. Yeah, and then it's viable.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Right, we look at it under the microscope. We say, oh, look,
they did attach again. They did it here. They are
dividing again, and then we can grow them up further.
They're getting older. Each time they divide, they get older,
just like our cells.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Oh I didn't think about that. If you think.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Yeah, if you think about it, our skin looks the
way it does because our cells have divided over and
over and over compared to a baby. But we can
grow it up again and we give a section of that.
We give a number of those cells to the DNA group,
who then freezes it in a non living manner. But
that can also be used for other people. Requesting cells.
(24:25):
If they don't need living dividing cells, will give them
the DNA material instead and protect As curator. I need
to be sure that we keep a certain amount of
the live cells back in the collection for future uses,
because you know, what's the most important use today? And
then I have to think about could there be something
more important in the future that people would say, wait,
(24:47):
why did you use it all up on that whatever
it was studying chromosomes. We need to bank some. We
use it now and we bank some for the future.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Wow, all right, I have to ask because I do
want to get again into these containers here how this
all works, so we can talk more about that for
our audience. Thirty eight years of doing this, clearly thousands
upon thousands of individuals gotten into plants, got some birds,
got some retails for you personally, what has been the
most like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this is
here at the laugh or did we get to freeze
(25:17):
this one? Has there been one, whether it's an individual
or a species or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I can only pick one.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Okay, one from your top ten comes up right away
when he said, well, there's.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
So many, because it has been a lot of years,
and I've been so fortunate to work on so many things,
So beginning with having my job being figured out how
to make rhino cells grow better, I got to work
with Sumatran rhino and northern white rhino and I was
actually successful and they're one of our best growing cells.
Today we don't worry about growing rhinos. So it's like
we got a rhino sample, it's going to work. We have,
(25:49):
you know, probably ninety nine percent success.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Right, do you like to look back? You walk past
the rhinol? I did that, like.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Nola, you know, before I die, They got samples the
Northern white rude.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
She was a northern white rhino that lived here in
the Safari apart for many years in case our listeners
didn't know, and everyone loved her. And it just reminds
me how great this place is, you know, the Safari Park,
all the nuances, guests, wildlife care, security, chafts, science, you know,
it's great and it's wonderful that guests can come visitors
here and know that these things are happening, these amazing
nuances of science are happening right here in Backman at
(26:22):
the Safari Park.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And then we branch out everywhere we have hubs that
San diego Zo Wildlife Alliance works with, and one of
our hubs is Hawaii and the endangered bird population there right. Yes,
that goes back to probably, I don't know that this
could ever happen again. It has to stand out as
one of my most memorable oh yeah samples I set
up was it's a Hawaiian honey creeper called the Yes
(26:46):
and they.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Live in Hawaii. They thought it was extinct.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
They rediscovered just a few individuals and they were making
a plan for how to try to bring them together
so that we could help them in reproduction and save
the species, kind of like we did with California condor. However,
there weren't enough individuals and they were only ever able
to bring the one male into the managed care program,
(27:11):
and he was older, and then we figured he was
going to die fairly soon, and he did. And they
wanted people to grow cells. And they said, we're going
to send you tissue and you need to grow the cells.
And I said, yeah, except we don't grow birds yet.
It was too early. It was two thousand and four.
I could grow feathers if feathers were growing in and
(27:31):
I said, if this bird doesn't have growing feathers. I
don't know how to grow a bird. So I begged
that they would send it to two different locations and
they said, okay, we'll look into that. And then they
came back and said, there is no other location that
does this.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
You have to do it.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
And then it was Thanksgiving weekend and there was a
team of people to receive the bird and went into
pathology and they were able to extract the eye. Because
I didn't know at the time, we didn't know I
in trachia. I never never thought of trachia. I tried
of her heart, kidney's spleen skin, which rarely grows on birds.
And I because of the past knowledge all the way
(28:07):
back to Arlene and doctor Banershka. Arlene had grown the
cornea of a whale, and I thought, well, maybe I
can grow the cornea. But the eye was the size
of a blueberry, and I couldn't really extract out the cornea.
So I kind of cut it in half and used
my very scientific words of front of eye and back
of eye and set up two different cultures.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
And back of eye grew.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
But the torture waiting for that to grow, but it did.
Eventually in four weeks, we ended up adding it to
the Frozen Zoo and it became the first selling ever
anywhere in the world of an extinct species because we
don't have Dodo cells or Tasmania chi passenger pigeon. And
then what that reminds us is the other value of
(28:50):
the Frozen Zoo. We need to be banking these animals now,
not when it's the last one that's pressure. If that
didn't work, we lost the ability to look at foul chromosomes,
the Fulei genome. We can't bring that species back from
one cell line, but we can learn so much more
about it just by studying living cells.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Then that knowledge can apply to future species possibly. Yeah. Right,
And so I want to ask real quick because you
mentioned we haven't done birds yet. So describe the situation.
You chop up the cells, you add the enzymes, you know,
all those things you're looking for. I'm guessing different temperatures,
different chemicals, different amounts of the enzymes. These are all
things I have to play and you have to learn
(29:30):
along the way what the right steps are for each mammals, birds, reptiles,
et cetera. Or is there a different reason why you're like, ah, bird,
I'm not ready yet.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
No, you're right, You're right. Temperature is one of the
biggest things. And they all grow in incubators. That four
weeks I was talking about. They're in an incubator, and
the technicians tend to, like the wildlife care specialists, they
have to go in every day and like look at
the cells and say, Okay, this one needs something else,
this one's happy, this one's not happy.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
What do I feed it?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
We get into a rhythm or we can kind of tell.
But some of them are different, and each time some
of them have just aren't working. We have to figure
something out. The birds actually grow at forty degrees celsius,
and mammals grow at thirty seven degrees, reptiles at thirty three.
Amphibians either room temperature or twenty seven. So it's very different.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, So they kind of go in groups.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
Though if they're related to each other, they behave similarly.
So carnivores we can kind of treat with the same media.
They take the same media, which is different from the
media that the gazelle groups take. So we have to
know all these things, and then we have to know
things too. For example, dolphins we learned to grow at
thirty seven degrees and whales grow at thirty three. But
(30:39):
then there are some things that are called whale, like
killer whale, that are actually a dolphin.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Oh yeah, So we have to know our taxonomy or
the how things are related, what groups they rely on commons.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
It kind of makes me think of my cookbook back home.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
You know, it kind of grows. You know, my mom's
way of making it. The mile might be different than
my way, and you have a little bit here and there.
But I know it's a silly way of describing it.
But you know you're recording all these subtle nuances and
variation depending on the species and the group or the family,
depending on what you're doing in the situation, just constantly
adding more or changing more.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Right, It's just like that.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And we consult with each other every day, you know,
if it's something new. Katie's growing a European fire salamander
and she just froze. It's one of the new species
this year. Wow, And we have never gotten a salamander
to work. So I would go look at it whenever
she wanted a second opinion, And you know, what do
you think I should do Is it ready to go
to the.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Next flask or is it not?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
What do I do?
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Because it's scary, you know, and there's no written answer.
You're building on past knowledge and then you share that
knowledge with the rest of the team and the scientists
of the future, the technicians.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
The future, interesting arguments.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
It's scary, but it's exciting to you write what you're
trying to do, but the unknown, Like how super exciting
is that? Like modern day superheroes that you guys are doing, so,
I mean really really great work, you know, and we
talked earlier. It's a fiftieth anniversary of the Frozen Zoo
and all these amazing things that I'm learning that we do.
I had no idea that nuances here makes me think, like,
what's going to happen fifty years from now? You know,
(32:03):
we only can do here at Backmant the Safari Park
in the Alliance and all this conservation work.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
I know, isn't it fun to think of? I mean,
Bnershka could never have imagined where this went.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
I mean he sort of did.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
He predicted cloning, but all the way the technology grew
and one we can't really probably even guess, but there
are things we know that we want to do. Right now,
we're growing only vertebrates, things with the backbone, birds, mammals, reptiles,
and fabians.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Fish.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Yeah, one thing my team is looking at. We want
to branch into invertebrates. The insects, Yeah, butterflies, monarch butterflies
are in trouble. The Lord Howse stick insect, which is
here at SDZWA.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yeah, you actually can see them at Wildlife Explorers based Canto.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Another unique species and.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
They're very endangered. There's only a few populations.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
We'd like to try to learn how to bank those,
which is completely different. And then another thing I think
you've covered in another podcast. But the big thing we're
trying to do is share this knowledge and these techniques
with people around the world because, as I mentioned, it's
too hard to get the samples here quickly. We can't
do everything. We're at capacity all the time. We're having
to make hard decisions. There's too many to grow at once.
(33:09):
Which one could we get another time if the animal
hasn't died, let's pass on that one. We've got to
do the ones that died, we have no more chance
to get those. But we're making decisions all the time.
It would be better if we could grow this where
people all around the world are helping with the effort
to biobank all these endangered species. And so we're running
a workshop this year our team for one full week.
Speaker 5 (33:32):
We're going to continue to keep our sales fed, but
we're going to train eight participants from around the globe.
That's awesome in these methods.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
They won't learn it in one week, but we'll be
there to help them along the way. They can write
and ask us questions and we will probably go to
their countries once they're set up and help them work
out the little details. So this way, if an animal dies,
and think of the biodiversity these other countries that we
don't have in the frozen zoo that will never be
able to or there might be permit issues where they
(34:02):
aren't allowed to leave the country. So this way, and
then it can be a network where we all could
call on each other. You know, this actually happened. There
was a rare dolphin that was about to die and
they were calling us and it was near Germany, and
I said, it's not going to work for us to
get there. However, we had trained someone. We've run these
courses before and one of the people we trained from
Germany he was up and running. So I called him
(34:24):
and I said, hey, could you get to this dolphin
in time?
Speaker 5 (34:26):
And if you have any questions will help.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
But anyway, we had that tiny network is a network
of just a couple in place. Now we want this
huge network where we have people spread all throughout the
globe so that we can collect all the spaces.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
It really speaks to the value of working together, working
with other organizations, working with the little individuals around the world,
instead of trying to go no, no, it's all ours.
We're doing the best job ever and you can't touch
it. It really goes to what we've always talked about with
the San Diego Zoo ands Fire Park, being partners with
other zeos around the world and here in the US.
It's not about which one's better or best. It's about
we have a common goal, and that's to really get
(35:01):
all life to thrive and help with these species around
the world. And having this network in place, and the
fact that you're hosting people from another different countries to
get this even further out there, so awesome, so very awesome.
I love that.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
The funny thing is we've actually published all our methods,
including where we buy our reagents, the vendors, everything, the
catalog numbers. We've published it in a book. But it's
not that easy. It's not the cookbook. Going back to
your cook you could follow a recipe, but it's not
the same as if your grandmother gave you those little.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Different right.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I really don't follow the recipe. That's but that's to
your point.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I kind of go on the vibe or I see
well my mom or my appolitea the and I kind
of go that route, you know, that little sprinkle whatever
that's fight yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Even like you were saying too, they call you in
to get eyes on that salamanders to thoseelves because it's like, well,
sometimes how it looks, or what it's doing, or where
it's in the process, and the timing of those aspects
as well. You can't really get that skill in a book,
but you can help support other people to learn those
skills and get up to those.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Speeds and think about I think the important part is
teaching how you look at it. That's what I've been
teaching more lately. I'm making this decision based on what
I see here. So back to your cooking. You know,
if bread should rise, you add yeast and the bread
should rise.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Unfortunately I'm not a good cook and I don't beg bread.
But it's you know, if the humidity changes or something
I might effected how it rises. And then that's an
experience passed down a long time. Or your grandmother could
say I've seen this happen last time we had them
onsoon and then you pass on that I have a.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Little this and said, you know, and it comes right off.
You know, Oh this is exciting. I'm curious to you know,
for the kids that are listening, the little mini scientists
right now on their way to school, like do you
have any like words of wisdom for them or any
kind of encouragement if they're thinking like do I want
to be a scientist or maybe I should go this
rout instead?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
What would you say?
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, well, I think it's really important a career. You
have it for a long time, hopefully before my job
here eight years. All my jobs were one and a
half years and I just wasn't passionate about them, and
it was a job and it was work. Once I
got here, it hasn't felt like work. It's just fun.
And I think it's really important if you're going to
(37:14):
be in a career for decades to do something you love.
So follow what your passion is and then explore reach out.
You know, I would have never ended up here if
not for trying to volunteer here. I would have never
thought I could have a job in the Frozen Zoo
Lab at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. But doing what
I loved, working with chromosomes and cells and animals.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
I always loved working with animals.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
It led me to this, just by exploring everything you
like and then sometimes you'll find something you don't like
along the way.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
Learn from that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, exactly, it's still learning either way.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
That's great advice.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I'm always kind of saying the same thing, just like,
find what you love and make a job out of
it and you're golden.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
We wait, wait, wait before we wrap up, totally forgot
we're running along, and thank you for a little extra time.
Oh yes, we have in front of us. So anybody
who is not watching this on video eventually go on YouTube.
But right now, the best I can compare this to
somebody my age. So we're talking gen x ish, right, Okay,
remember those CD towers and those towers it's about that size,
(38:17):
about two and a half almost three, But it's not
a CD tower. This is how things are stored in
the Frozen Zoo. And like you mentioned, the Frozen Zoo
is a room and in that room we have how
many large stainless steel containers roughly about seven, so about
seven there's liquid nitrogen going through the system to keep
everything of that sub three hundred degrees or whatever you use.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
It is truly liquid. I mean it says liquid nitrogen,
but it's a liquid.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
It's a clean it's so cold it's liquid.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Open it up, it just comes.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah. So you know, everyone always compared to dress Park
because dress Park was using the real idea of cryogenically
frozen things. You have that myst that comes out. I've
been in there before, you've opened them up. You've pulled
one of these towers out, can you hear already? The
temperature starts to change on the metals and it kind
of makes a little bit of noise and you pull
out from the side. Then one of these trays that again,
if you're just stacked maybe what three or four CDs.
(39:06):
It's about outsize totally.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Okay, So inside though, and it's not actual CDs. You
pull out this case again it's outside of like maybe
four CDs cases stacked. But then you open it up
and inside then are all these little vials. Now what
would be inside these vials if this was part of
the frozen zoo and you had just taken it out
of one of the freezers.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
Right, So the box, we're going to fill it eventually.
But what we do is we put member back to
the nine vials, four go in one location, forgo in
another location on a different power grid, and inside would
be the four vials. We color code the tops so
that we don't mix anything up. All the cells kind
of look alike. Okay, and then we aren't in bar
coding yet, so we actually handwrit on these and you
(39:46):
can pick one up, sure, and in it would be
these are just these are just props that we use
for our education.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Okay, what do you get? So I got oh, I
got a male condo door, California condo, Californic condor. And
then the date is nine June twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So that it's an actual day that that actual animal
with that.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
We call them KB numbers, which is a lab number.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
KB stands for Kurt Venershkakab number. And in it would
be a little pinkish ice ball if it was really
in the frozen zoo. And in that little ice ball
would be one to three million million living cells. Wow,
in the size of like your pinky fingertip.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
To each file. And so this California condo is all
these blue ones exactly, so millions of cells in each vial.
So for those who are not able to watch the video,
the vial is about as big around as maybe a
highlighter like a not a full highlighter pen, but like
maybe like an ink pen of some sort. And then
it's maybe and a half lender, yeah, inch and a
(40:43):
half or so in length, with a little blue cap
and it's sort of clear in color. So each case
and holds about how many total if we put.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Four in there, there's one hundred spots if we put
four from each animal. Okay, kids, do the math. Twenty
five animals and then thirteen in a tower.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
And you have how many towers in the.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Six times four twenty four? Yeah, so we can do
all that matter.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Then you have the seven different containers there, plus in
the mirrored collection elsewhere.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
Right, and the seven different containers. Though some are dedicated
to skin cells, some are dedicated to game eats. The
skin cells can live in the vapor of the nitrogen,
which is maybe ten degrees warmer the game eat cells,
sperm and eggs. They have to be submerged in the
liquid to stay at a true negative one hundred and
ninety six varies.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Even the height in theay.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
You have to bring the level of the liquid nitrogen
all the way to the top. So that's why they
have different containers than ours. They keep theirs full. Ours
are in mostly vapor, and then the plant cells and
the stem cells have their own tank.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Wow. Wow, that is fast, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Though?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Is there anything about the process that we haven't covered
yet that you want to make sure our audience knows
about it? We kind of cover everything here with the
tower and the cells and the freezing.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I think one thing that gets overlooked sometimes, and this
goes back to Arlene told me the story when the
frozen Zoo had about three hundred and fifty individuals, including
a whale. Really interesting things. Some of the animals. Ralph
Banershka talks about going to get with his dad. They
were banked in there, well, they were all in one tank.
There was a power failure. They lost every sample in there.
(42:18):
And she told me this story with this horrible look
in her eyes, and it really set into my memory
and my fear that this would happen. We can't have
this happen again. And I literally had nightmares after thought.
They divided into duplicate tanks, but they sat side by
side on the same power grid. If there was a
(42:38):
fire and earthquake, they were in the same location. And
so I was always having nightmares. And she finally said, Okay,
we got to stop your nightmares. We're going to move
this a fifteen minute walk away, and now it's about
a forty minute drive away. But I think what we
have to remember, besides growing the Frozen Zoo and adding
to it and all the things we're doing and sharing
it with people around the world, for all kinds of
studies that help humans and animals, mostly animals, but also
(43:01):
can benefit humans, what we have to think about too,
is that we can't ever lose any of these again
like they did.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
So part of my job is curator.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
The huge responsibility as part of it is we have
alarms on it, we have cameras on it, we get
woken up in the night, security can call us if
anything looks unusual.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
We've had a lot of close calls.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
And each time we do that, we put in another
safeguard so that that will.
Speaker 5 (43:26):
Never happen again. And so to have lasted.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Fifty years goes to this huge team of people who
have been caring for it, including security and the team
that grows the cells because it's so important to them.
And sometimes it's just anybody who's in the building walking
by and saying that doesn't look right, I'm going to
call on the call down list. So we want to
preserve what we have and we want to grow for
the future, and we want to share that's awesome and
(43:50):
get people doing this around the world so that it
isn't this.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Everything is here in San Diego.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
We want I get it good weather, we got Mexican food.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
I understand it. No, but that's a good call. I
mean again, global global work together, We're gonna make that
impact and protect everything.
Speaker 5 (44:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Okay, so now you can tell her thank you for
being here.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Friend, thank you. That was really really great.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
I learned so much. I have more questions too, but
that was super exciting. Thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
You really appreciate your time.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Sure come back anytime. Every day there's something new going
on and we can't predict what it is.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Good it sounds good.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Thank you man. I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
I mean in general idea of the Frozen Zoo, but
all those nuances, oh, in the different teams.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
The different parts.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I mean, she talked about bird eyes and whale eyes,
you know, and outside of the conversation it wouldn't made sense.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
But that was super engaging. Hopefully our listeners learned a
lot too.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, and what I really appreciate too was her story
and sharing in partnership with the Frozen Zoo. Story was
just absolutely fascinating, but sort of the underlying tone there,
or her story of studying something completely different, showed up
to do this one thing, oh yeah, and then had
no idea what the future held. It's that idea that
just be opened opportunities and maybe anybody out there thinking
about their career path or what they're doing, or not
(44:59):
feeling they're in the right thing, be curious, try something new.
If it doesn't work out, you've learned something, and if
it does work out, I mean, look, she's a curator
of the Frozen Zoo now, because she was like, yeah,
I'll take a chance on this.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
She saw that door she stepped right through. So that's
definitely something engaging and all the life here. Granted I
just got pooed on by hummingbirdens and we were talking,
but that's a part of it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
I'm sure you hate it every moment.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
It was great, but you know, it's all about the
visual components here and I'm really glad our listeners come
in and check it out.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
But it made me think back at that last episode in.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Education programs and kids can come here to the Beckam
in the center all the different science programs we offer.
So parents highly encourage you to check out our website
right sz Safari Park dot org and learn about some
of those programs of education that they can get involved
in here well.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
And like Lisa in our last episode mention, even if
you are looking for work in this type of world,
oh yeah, but you're not here in San Diego. There
are zoos around the nation, around the world that are
doing similar work that you can be a part of
and support your local zoo, go to the educational programs,
or be a scientist or whatever it may be. Yeah,
it's pretty exciting to think that we're a part of
this big network and helping everybody out.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
One hundred percent of my friend and you know, even
all that the humming bird's back. Oh a lot of
wildlife going here at the park today. But with that,
we're gonna talk about a very unique animal tea, right
and kind of tied into the fiftieth anniversary. We talked
about the past and now we're talking about the future,
but kind of see an animal up close in center
of some of the conservation work being done, right, Yeah,
the Shavalski's first rider or the Mongolian wild horse.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Which I'm super excited about.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
I know it's on a bird, but this animal is wicked,
beautiful and we get to talk to wildlife care team too,
and we got to say at the Safari Park, which
I think, Amanda, you're excited about it. See right, we'll
get our maybe on a on a bell hay or
something funny like that.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
You're not not allergic, are you?
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Man?
Speaker 1 (46:37):
You know she's not allergic. We're good.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
I am but.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
Get excited about it, right, So it's gonna be a
great transition.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, so I think the value of this next visit.
If you haven't listened already, check out the last episode
of last season with Doctor Oli Ryder. He talks more
about the pea horses we sometimes call them, and the
tie into the frozens. Who's supporting actual wildlife and so
we'll go out and see him. So if you haven't already,
be sure to subscribe and then tune in next time
when we get out in the wilds of the Safari
(47:06):
Park to see one of these beautiful horses up close
and personal. Can't wait now, markol and I'm Rick Schwartz.
Thanks for listening and watching. For more information about the
San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park, go
to SDZWA dot org. Amazing Wildlife is a production of iHeartRadio.
(47:29):
Our supervising producers are Nikia Swinton and Dylan Fagan, and
our sound designers are Sierra Spreen and Matt Russell. For
more shows from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Rick Schwartz
Marco Wendt
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.