July 17, 2025 • 18 mins
Katie Heineman works with the San Diego Zoo and is a Program officer with IUCN Species Survival Commission Center. We'll talk about the fascinating "Frozen Zoo".
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I saw a thing on I think it was Axios
the other day and it was about something called the
Frozen Zoo, and it was just such a fascinating story because,
as you know, I am a big time science nerd.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I am very, very proudly a nerd.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And also this is a project that is at the
San Diego Zoo. And when I was a kid, I
grew up spent much of my childhood in Oceanside and
Carlsbad and high school in La Joya, and my parents
worked on Camp Pendleton and then down in San Diego
at the Balboa Navy Hospital.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
So I've been to the San.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Diego Zoo more times than I've been to any other zoo.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
In my whole life. And actually I'm I'm going to
San Diego this.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Weekend, believe it or not. Not sure if I'll get
to the zoo anyway, So I read about this Frozen
Zoo and I just find it fascinating, so joining us to.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Katie Heineman is she's at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife's
Alliance Frozen Zoo, and she is all a program officer
with the i U c N Species Survival Commission Center,
which probably gives some clue as to at least part
of the function of the Frozen Zoo. So, with that
much too long introduction, Katie, Welcome to KOA. Thanks for doing.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
This, Hi, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Are you wearing like medical scrubs with mushrooms on them?
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Oh no, I'm very much very loud rights and fungus
and you know, foxes and sweaters.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yes, all right, it's a it's a very very excellent
piece of attire for somebody who works at a zoo.
I want to spend almost almost all our time on
the Frozen Zoo. But just very briefly, what is i U.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
C n.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
H.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I U s as the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature. It's an international body that really helps nations
and scientists collaborate around conserving biodiversity.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Okay, so now we've got the Frozen Zoo and I
got a lot of aspects that I want to talk
with you about this. And I think in my I
think most people will think about preserving animals, but you
are doing stuff with plants as well. We'll get to both,
but just start with first of all, the mission.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, so the mission of the Frozen Zoo. So the
frozen zoo is a living collection of cells reproductive material
for primarily vertebrates or animals like mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians,
and so the idea is that it preserves this living
material so that it can be used to conserve nature
in the future. And there's lots of different ways that
these cells, sperm eggs can be used to fulfill that mission.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And are they always stored in that form rather than
as some kind of fertilized egg.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
They can be stored as embryos. The predominant form of
material in the frozen who is actually skin cells. So
you take a biopsy of a skin, a piece of
skin from a mammal, and then you can grow it
on culture media and then you can save it. And
that's still something that can be alive, but it doesn't
need to necessarily have another animal fertilize it for it
(03:17):
to be a living material that can be cryopreserved.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Is that process that you just described, is that cloning
or is that something like cloning?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, that's just culturing cells, so it is something Those cells, though,
can be used for cloning. So you can take the
genetic material from those skin cells and then you can
put it inside of an embryo, and that creates a clone.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Okay, gosh, there's so much to talk about here. Is
there something in particular about skin cells that makes them
preferable for this function versus you know, some other cell.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Or fiberglass cells specifically, are tend to readily grow on
culture media. So, and also, just skin is something that
can be conserved at different points in an animal's life.
There are most other types of cells. The animal might
have to be dead, or there might have to be
a surgery that goes on in order to harvest that.
But skin is something that could be harvested pretty easily
(04:24):
from just interacting with animals for routine veterinary procedures too.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
What would the purpose be of culturing culturing cells in
a way that doesn't create a clone or a whole
new animal, but just more cells.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, there's a few reasons. So this kind of cell
line for different types of animals is really important for
medical research. It is also just a really purified form
of genetic material that has been used to generate over
fifty reference genomes. It can also be used the cells
themselves can be used to test the physiology of animals
(05:02):
in different climate context, it can be exposed to different stresses,
so we can kind of model responses of animals to biodiversity.
So there's lots of ways that these materials can be
used that aren't cloning, but they have been used also
for conservation cloning.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So if you're starting with a skin cell, can you
effectively grow some of whatever the skin is for that animal?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You can growth things called organoids from different cell types.
That's not something that we really do or specialize in,
and honestly, it's something that we're more exploring for other
types of material that we biobank, like ovarian tissue is
something that we're interested in creating organitoids from. But that
is something that could be possible with certain types of
(05:47):
cell lines, but it's not really the focus of our program.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So I think a lot of people would jump to
the idea that at least a mission, if not the mission,
would be to be able to recover species that go
stinct or you know, a less dramatic version of Jurassic Park, Right.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So is that a key mission?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And then separate from that, what what are the other
big picture purposes for the frozen Zoo beyond being able
to preserve species.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, so we think of biobanking and the Frozen Zoo
as a tool for species recovery. So we don't want
to be thinking of it as these species need to
go extinct before we use the cells in the Frozen Zoo.
We want the cells to be used to revive the
genetic diversity of species that are still on Earth. And
so an example is we've been able to clone individuals
(06:43):
of the blackfooted ferret, which is a critically endangered ferret
that is kind of in your neck of the woods.
It lives in South Dakota, and we've been able to
clone three female blackfooted ferrets from cell lines in the
Frozen Zoo and that has now created an additional founder
that has actually created new puffs in.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
That population of black potdpirits.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And so while we do have extinct animals in the
Frozen Zoo, our true mission is just to find ways
to integrate cloning, to integrate reproductive enhancement into living populations
of species. And so yeah, in terms of the broader
picture of the Frozen Zoo, we really look forward to
ways that new technologies can help utilize these cells in
(07:30):
ways that were never dreamt of before. Things like Crisper
could really revolutionize the types of applications that the Frozen
Zoo can be used for.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And for those just joining, we're talking with Katie Heinemann
from the San Diego Zoo about their Frozen Zoo. So
for those who don't know, so, Crisper is gene editing technology.
So if you were going to use a relatively small
number of samples of a particular species to try to
(08:01):
do what, for example, what you just described with the
blackfooted ferrets, but where you might want to create a
reasonably large number of animals to repopulate, is there any
worry there about creating some animals whose genotypes are too
similar to each other? And then you've got some issues
(08:23):
with the breeding of animals that have very very similar genotypes,
are the same same almost And if so, could you
use gene editing to make those animals genetically very variant
enough to alleviate that concern or is it a dumb question.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
No, that's a central question to what we do in
terms of assessing the genetic diversity of the Frozen Zoo,
and so two things there. So are we concerned with
introducing animals that would produce in breeding, and so typically
that's why we advocate for proactive biobanking. So we really
(09:04):
want other zoos and other wildlife facilities to be collecting
material of animals so that we have the most genetically
diverse celling collection we have, so we have a diverse
stock to repopulate animals from. And we would probably never
clone an animal from the Frozen Zoo that was not
increasing the genetic diversity of the wild population because it
(09:27):
would be a lot of effort to do if it's
not going to improve the breeding stock of the living population.
And then for the other point about crisper, that's a
really exciting potential avenue for some species. We have non
living DNA, so not cell lines, but maybe museum specimens
or DNA from animals that have already died that we
(09:50):
know their we know their DNA, and we know the
genetic code that used to exist in a species that
maybe has gone through a bottleneck or has been reduced
when population has declined, and so we could potentially use
gene editing on the sell lines we have in the
Frozen Zoo to recreate genetic diversity that existed in the past.
(10:11):
And that's not something we've done yet, but I think
it's something that's on the horizon with the new types
of technology that are becoming available through Crisper.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And I wonder with some animals, as with humans, there
are diseases that are either caused by a genetic issue
or or someone is made susceptible to it by a
genetic issue. And I wonder if there's any thought with
(10:38):
with the Frozen Zoo, the intersection of Frozen Zoo and Crisper,
to say, all right, some particular species out there is
getting is susceptible to this disease because of a genetic thing.
Maybe we can find that tweak that gene turn that
A to a C or that whatever, and uh right.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
And then you know the letters, and then maybe save
a species that way.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Is that to science FICTIONNY or is that another thing
you're thinking about.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I mean, I wouldn't say that that technology is going
to happen next year. But an example of that where
we would love to be able to do something like
that is in Hawaiian birds, where malaria is killing many
of the Hawaiian forest birds, and so if it were
possible to edit the genome of Hawaiian force birds to
(11:30):
confer malarial resistance. That would be a really exciting technology,
but it also requires us to know how to do
a lot of other things, like take the cell lines
into embryo stage and be able to rear birds from
cell lines, which we also don't currently know how to do.
But I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility
of what could eventually be done with the frozen zoom.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I'm curious whether there are any interesting, important, difficult ethical
questions around any of that, the way some people bring
up ethical questions about cloning of humans or even cloning
of sheep and stuff like that. Are there ethical questions
with any of this that you guys think are actually
(12:12):
serious questions and not just you know, troublemakers.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No, I think, especially like maybe even the example I
just gave of the Hawaiian birds, Definitely indigenous communities on
Hawaii consider Hawaiian birds to be ancestors, and so changing
the genetic material of Hawaiian birds should be something that's
only done in consultation with those communities, Because maybe that
has a different implication if you consider Hawaiian birds to
(12:42):
be so culturally important that they're a member of the communities.
So I think there are important questions to be worked out,
and there's potential consequences for changing genes that that we
need to consider that could be second order effects. But
I think it's good to think through those cases and
take them case by case instead of saying that all
(13:05):
of that technology is inherently ethically problematic and bad without
considering the positive ramifications for biodiversity.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's a good answer. I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We're talking with doctor Katie Heinemann, PhD from the San
Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliances Frozen Zoo. You probably kind of
did this already, but a listener would like you to
explain again briefly, but in Layman's terms, the process of
culturing the skin cells.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Okay, well, I'm going to just back up one second
to say I'm a plant lady. My background is in
seed banking, so I'm going I just want you to know,
if there's any doctors listening, that this might not be
the perfect explanation, but my understanding is that they essentially
take a skin sample from an animal, and this could
(13:58):
be either when the animals allowed or soon post mortem,
and they put it in. They basically preserve that cell
so that it can be put on nutritious media that
has the additives that the cell lines can grow and expand.
And then once they have millions of cells growing in
that culture medium, and this can take this process can
(14:18):
take about a month, they put cryoprotectants on those cell
lines and then they put them in liquid nitrogen, which
preserves them basically indefinitely.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Oh okay, that's interesting, I learned something there. So the
the Frozen Zoo biobanking is after the culturing, so you're
culturing lots and lots of the cells and not just
the very small number of cells that was originally taken
as the sample, but something that you've grown from that
before you put it in the in the biobank. So
that I'm glad I asked that I learned something there.
(14:49):
So let's talk about plants then, since your seed lady
and I did see a headline first plants introduced to
the Frozen Zoo, So tell us about that and maybe
include in your answer why Frozen Zoo for plants versus
seed bank? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I love that. I love that question.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
So most plants are amazing. They have the ability to
be biobanked by nature. So have you ever heard of
the soil seed bank. Most plants can or seeds are
adapted to essentially live in the soil for a period
of time to wait for the right conditions to Germany,
and so that makes seeds really able to be dried
down and frozen basically in just a normal chest freezer
(15:37):
at negative twenty degrees celsius. And so that's the way
eighty percent of plants species are conserved, is you dry
them down and then you freeze them just in basically
a normal freezer. But for some plant species, and oaks
are a really primary example of this, they cannot be
frozen down in this way. And so oaks you can
imagine an acorn. An acorn is a pretty big, fleshy
(16:00):
fruit that cannot be It can't be dried without killing
the embryo of the acorn. And so that's why researchers
at our facility are working to conserve oaks in cryogenic
storage in the frozen zoo. And so they basically grow
the oaks in these tiny baby food jars and it
makes these tiny, tiny little bonzie oak trees that then
(16:22):
grow something called a somatic embryo that can be cryopreserved
in the Frozen Zoo, which is really cool.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Wow. All right, I have a story for You're We're
doing a.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Bunch of landscaping on an ugly house that we bought,
and my wife was, you know, walking around working with
the landscapers, and she sees this tiny little shoot coming
out of the ground and she says, it was like
a baby oak tree. And my wife is very big
time in the gardening, right, she starts digging around and
it was a shoot coming out of an acorn. And
(16:53):
so we got our own baby oak tree. And she's
going to put it in a pot and grow it
a little bit and then plant it somewhere and we'll
have our own oak tree.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
And you can't have it even for your frozen zoo,
because we're going to have it.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, we'll send us some shoot tips and we'll preserve
that genetic diversity for centuries.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
All right, that's good.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Last question for you as you've been involved with the
Frozen Zoo project, is there anything that has What's the
thing that has surprised you the most.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I think just the vastness of it, the fact that
there's over thirteen hundred species and over fifty years. Just
interacting with the diversity of the collection of the San
Diego Zoo has really allowed this collection that supports conservation
(17:49):
in a way to grow.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
It just makes me.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Really excited about about this organization and about the way
that they essentially supported this collection for fifty years without
really grant support. The people of San Diego have essentially
just unknowing we've been supporting this amazing collection for fifty years.
I don't know the continuity of it and just the
(18:12):
uniqueness of it is something that really strikes me.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Katie Heineman's PhD at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
is Frozen Zoosh's program officer with IUCN as well.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's a fascinating project and I wish you a lots
of luck and hopefully maybe I'll get to the zoo
San Diego Zoo this weekend for the first time in
a while.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, come with it us, all right, Thanks, bye bye.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
All right. That was very cool, very cool. I loved
that I went longer, and I thought I would because
it was so cool.
I saw a thing on I think it was Axios
the other day and it was about something called the
Frozen Zoo, and it was just such a fascinating story because,
as you know, I am a big time science nerd.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I am very, very proudly a nerd.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And also this is a project that is at the
San Diego Zoo. And when I was a kid, I
grew up spent much of my childhood in Oceanside and
Carlsbad and high school in La Joya, and my parents
worked on Camp Pendleton and then down in San Diego
at the Balboa Navy Hospital.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
So I've been to the San.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Diego Zoo more times than I've been to any other zoo.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
In my whole life. And actually I'm I'm going to
San Diego this.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Weekend, believe it or not. Not sure if I'll get
to the zoo anyway, So I read about this Frozen
Zoo and I just find it fascinating, so joining us to.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Katie Heineman is she's at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife's
Alliance Frozen Zoo, and she is all a program officer
with the i U c N Species Survival Commission Center,
which probably gives some clue as to at least part
of the function of the Frozen Zoo. So, with that
much too long introduction, Katie, Welcome to KOA. Thanks for doing.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
This, Hi, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Are you wearing like medical scrubs with mushrooms on them?
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Oh no, I'm very much very loud rights and fungus
and you know, foxes and sweaters.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yes, all right, it's a it's a very very excellent
piece of attire for somebody who works at a zoo.
I want to spend almost almost all our time on
the Frozen Zoo. But just very briefly, what is i U.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
C n.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
H.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I U s as the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature. It's an international body that really helps nations
and scientists collaborate around conserving biodiversity.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Okay, so now we've got the Frozen Zoo and I
got a lot of aspects that I want to talk
with you about this. And I think in my I
think most people will think about preserving animals, but you
are doing stuff with plants as well. We'll get to both,
but just start with first of all, the mission.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, so the mission of the Frozen Zoo. So the
frozen zoo is a living collection of cells reproductive material
for primarily vertebrates or animals like mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians,
and so the idea is that it preserves this living
material so that it can be used to conserve nature
in the future. And there's lots of different ways that
these cells, sperm eggs can be used to fulfill that mission.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And are they always stored in that form rather than
as some kind of fertilized egg.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
They can be stored as embryos. The predominant form of
material in the frozen who is actually skin cells. So
you take a biopsy of a skin, a piece of
skin from a mammal, and then you can grow it
on culture media and then you can save it. And
that's still something that can be alive, but it doesn't
need to necessarily have another animal fertilize it for it
(03:17):
to be a living material that can be cryopreserved.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Is that process that you just described, is that cloning
or is that something like cloning?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, that's just culturing cells, so it is something Those cells, though,
can be used for cloning. So you can take the
genetic material from those skin cells and then you can
put it inside of an embryo, and that creates a clone.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Okay, gosh, there's so much to talk about here. Is
there something in particular about skin cells that makes them
preferable for this function versus you know, some other cell.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Or fiberglass cells specifically, are tend to readily grow on
culture media. So, and also, just skin is something that
can be conserved at different points in an animal's life.
There are most other types of cells. The animal might
have to be dead, or there might have to be
a surgery that goes on in order to harvest that.
But skin is something that could be harvested pretty easily
(04:24):
from just interacting with animals for routine veterinary procedures too.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
What would the purpose be of culturing culturing cells in
a way that doesn't create a clone or a whole
new animal, but just more cells.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, there's a few reasons. So this kind of cell
line for different types of animals is really important for
medical research. It is also just a really purified form
of genetic material that has been used to generate over
fifty reference genomes. It can also be used the cells
themselves can be used to test the physiology of animals
(05:02):
in different climate context, it can be exposed to different stresses,
so we can kind of model responses of animals to biodiversity.
So there's lots of ways that these materials can be
used that aren't cloning, but they have been used also
for conservation cloning.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So if you're starting with a skin cell, can you
effectively grow some of whatever the skin is for that animal?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You can growth things called organoids from different cell types.
That's not something that we really do or specialize in,
and honestly, it's something that we're more exploring for other
types of material that we biobank, like ovarian tissue is
something that we're interested in creating organitoids from. But that
is something that could be possible with certain types of
(05:47):
cell lines, but it's not really the focus of our program.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So I think a lot of people would jump to
the idea that at least a mission, if not the mission,
would be to be able to recover species that go
stinct or you know, a less dramatic version of Jurassic Park, Right.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So is that a key mission?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And then separate from that, what what are the other
big picture purposes for the frozen Zoo beyond being able
to preserve species.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, so we think of biobanking and the Frozen Zoo
as a tool for species recovery. So we don't want
to be thinking of it as these species need to
go extinct before we use the cells in the Frozen Zoo.
We want the cells to be used to revive the
genetic diversity of species that are still on Earth. And
so an example is we've been able to clone individuals
(06:43):
of the blackfooted ferret, which is a critically endangered ferret
that is kind of in your neck of the woods.
It lives in South Dakota, and we've been able to
clone three female blackfooted ferrets from cell lines in the
Frozen Zoo and that has now created an additional founder
that has actually created new puffs in.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
That population of black potdpirits.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And so while we do have extinct animals in the
Frozen Zoo, our true mission is just to find ways
to integrate cloning, to integrate reproductive enhancement into living populations
of species. And so yeah, in terms of the broader
picture of the Frozen Zoo, we really look forward to
ways that new technologies can help utilize these cells in
(07:30):
ways that were never dreamt of before. Things like Crisper
could really revolutionize the types of applications that the Frozen
Zoo can be used for.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And for those just joining, we're talking with Katie Heinemann
from the San Diego Zoo about their Frozen Zoo. So
for those who don't know, so, Crisper is gene editing technology.
So if you were going to use a relatively small
number of samples of a particular species to try to
(08:01):
do what, for example, what you just described with the
blackfooted ferrets, but where you might want to create a
reasonably large number of animals to repopulate, is there any
worry there about creating some animals whose genotypes are too
similar to each other? And then you've got some issues
(08:23):
with the breeding of animals that have very very similar genotypes,
are the same same almost And if so, could you
use gene editing to make those animals genetically very variant
enough to alleviate that concern or is it a dumb question.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
No, that's a central question to what we do in
terms of assessing the genetic diversity of the Frozen Zoo,
and so two things there. So are we concerned with
introducing animals that would produce in breeding, and so typically
that's why we advocate for proactive biobanking. So we really
(09:04):
want other zoos and other wildlife facilities to be collecting
material of animals so that we have the most genetically
diverse celling collection we have, so we have a diverse
stock to repopulate animals from. And we would probably never
clone an animal from the Frozen Zoo that was not
increasing the genetic diversity of the wild population because it
(09:27):
would be a lot of effort to do if it's
not going to improve the breeding stock of the living population.
And then for the other point about crisper, that's a
really exciting potential avenue for some species. We have non
living DNA, so not cell lines, but maybe museum specimens
or DNA from animals that have already died that we
(09:50):
know their we know their DNA, and we know the
genetic code that used to exist in a species that
maybe has gone through a bottleneck or has been reduced
when population has declined, and so we could potentially use
gene editing on the sell lines we have in the
Frozen Zoo to recreate genetic diversity that existed in the past.
(10:11):
And that's not something we've done yet, but I think
it's something that's on the horizon with the new types
of technology that are becoming available through Crisper.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And I wonder with some animals, as with humans, there
are diseases that are either caused by a genetic issue
or or someone is made susceptible to it by a
genetic issue. And I wonder if there's any thought with
(10:38):
with the Frozen Zoo, the intersection of Frozen Zoo and Crisper,
to say, all right, some particular species out there is
getting is susceptible to this disease because of a genetic thing.
Maybe we can find that tweak that gene turn that
A to a C or that whatever, and uh right.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
And then you know the letters, and then maybe save
a species that way.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Is that to science FICTIONNY or is that another thing
you're thinking about.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I mean, I wouldn't say that that technology is going
to happen next year. But an example of that where
we would love to be able to do something like
that is in Hawaiian birds, where malaria is killing many
of the Hawaiian forest birds, and so if it were
possible to edit the genome of Hawaiian force birds to
(11:30):
confer malarial resistance. That would be a really exciting technology,
but it also requires us to know how to do
a lot of other things, like take the cell lines
into embryo stage and be able to rear birds from
cell lines, which we also don't currently know how to do.
But I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility
of what could eventually be done with the frozen zoom.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I'm curious whether there are any interesting, important, difficult ethical
questions around any of that, the way some people bring
up ethical questions about cloning of humans or even cloning
of sheep and stuff like that. Are there ethical questions
with any of this that you guys think are actually
(12:12):
serious questions and not just you know, troublemakers.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No, I think, especially like maybe even the example I
just gave of the Hawaiian birds, Definitely indigenous communities on
Hawaii consider Hawaiian birds to be ancestors, and so changing
the genetic material of Hawaiian birds should be something that's
only done in consultation with those communities, Because maybe that
has a different implication if you consider Hawaiian birds to
(12:42):
be so culturally important that they're a member of the communities.
So I think there are important questions to be worked out,
and there's potential consequences for changing genes that that we
need to consider that could be second order effects. But
I think it's good to think through those cases and
take them case by case instead of saying that all
(13:05):
of that technology is inherently ethically problematic and bad without
considering the positive ramifications for biodiversity.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's a good answer. I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We're talking with doctor Katie Heinemann, PhD from the San
Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliances Frozen Zoo. You probably kind of
did this already, but a listener would like you to
explain again briefly, but in Layman's terms, the process of
culturing the skin cells.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Okay, well, I'm going to just back up one second
to say I'm a plant lady. My background is in
seed banking, so I'm going I just want you to know,
if there's any doctors listening, that this might not be
the perfect explanation, but my understanding is that they essentially
take a skin sample from an animal, and this could
(13:58):
be either when the animals allowed or soon post mortem,
and they put it in. They basically preserve that cell
so that it can be put on nutritious media that
has the additives that the cell lines can grow and expand.
And then once they have millions of cells growing in
that culture medium, and this can take this process can
(14:18):
take about a month, they put cryoprotectants on those cell
lines and then they put them in liquid nitrogen, which
preserves them basically indefinitely.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Oh okay, that's interesting, I learned something there. So the
the Frozen Zoo biobanking is after the culturing, so you're
culturing lots and lots of the cells and not just
the very small number of cells that was originally taken
as the sample, but something that you've grown from that
before you put it in the in the biobank. So
that I'm glad I asked that I learned something there.
(14:49):
So let's talk about plants then, since your seed lady
and I did see a headline first plants introduced to
the Frozen Zoo, So tell us about that and maybe
include in your answer why Frozen Zoo for plants versus
seed bank? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I love that. I love that question.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
So most plants are amazing. They have the ability to
be biobanked by nature. So have you ever heard of
the soil seed bank. Most plants can or seeds are
adapted to essentially live in the soil for a period
of time to wait for the right conditions to Germany,
and so that makes seeds really able to be dried
down and frozen basically in just a normal chest freezer
(15:37):
at negative twenty degrees celsius. And so that's the way
eighty percent of plants species are conserved, is you dry
them down and then you freeze them just in basically
a normal freezer. But for some plant species, and oaks
are a really primary example of this, they cannot be
frozen down in this way. And so oaks you can
imagine an acorn. An acorn is a pretty big, fleshy
(16:00):
fruit that cannot be It can't be dried without killing
the embryo of the acorn. And so that's why researchers
at our facility are working to conserve oaks in cryogenic
storage in the frozen zoo. And so they basically grow
the oaks in these tiny baby food jars and it
makes these tiny, tiny little bonzie oak trees that then
(16:22):
grow something called a somatic embryo that can be cryopreserved
in the Frozen Zoo, which is really cool.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Wow. All right, I have a story for You're We're
doing a.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Bunch of landscaping on an ugly house that we bought,
and my wife was, you know, walking around working with
the landscapers, and she sees this tiny little shoot coming
out of the ground and she says, it was like
a baby oak tree. And my wife is very big
time in the gardening, right, she starts digging around and
it was a shoot coming out of an acorn. And
(16:53):
so we got our own baby oak tree. And she's
going to put it in a pot and grow it
a little bit and then plant it somewhere and we'll
have our own oak tree.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
And you can't have it even for your frozen zoo,
because we're going to have it.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, we'll send us some shoot tips and we'll preserve
that genetic diversity for centuries.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
All right, that's good.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Last question for you as you've been involved with the
Frozen Zoo project, is there anything that has What's the
thing that has surprised you the most.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I think just the vastness of it, the fact that
there's over thirteen hundred species and over fifty years. Just
interacting with the diversity of the collection of the San
Diego Zoo has really allowed this collection that supports conservation
(17:49):
in a way to grow.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
It just makes me.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Really excited about about this organization and about the way
that they essentially supported this collection for fifty years without
really grant support. The people of San Diego have essentially
just unknowing we've been supporting this amazing collection for fifty years.
I don't know the continuity of it and just the
(18:12):
uniqueness of it is something that really strikes me.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Katie Heineman's PhD at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
is Frozen Zoosh's program officer with IUCN as well.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's a fascinating project and I wish you a lots
of luck and hopefully maybe I'll get to the zoo
San Diego Zoo this weekend for the first time in
a while.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, come with it us, all right, Thanks, bye bye.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
All right. That was very cool, very cool. I loved
that I went longer, and I thought I would because
it was so cool.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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