Frozen Vault to House Endangered Species DNA, Tissue Samples for Preservation

A US biotech firm is building a vault with thousands of frozen DNA samples to save endangered species from extinction. The company, Colossal Biosciences, is the same outfit that’s using genetic engineering to try and bring back the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and Dodo. 

The Colossal Biovault and World Preservation Lab will be a “modern-day Noah’s Ark” for species preservation, the company says. The vault will be housed at Dubai’s Museum of the Future. It's in the United Arab Emirates. The vault will preserve millions of samples from 10,000 species. That includes tissue samples, reproductive cells, and DNA. 

Biologists say such efforts are crucial for saving species on Earth. Tens of thousands of them are lost each year. 

“We need to start backing up all life on Earth, because while conservation works, it’s not working at the speed (at) which we’re eradicating species,” Ben Lamm told CNN. Lamm is CEO of Colossal Biosciences.

Lamm said Colossal’s biovault is the animal equivalent of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. That vault is in the Arctic. There, 1.4 million seeds are being preserved. Colossal's animal vault will be a massive storage site. But it won't be the first. The Frozen Ark has stored 48,000 samples from over 5,000 species at many UK sites. It's a nonprofit. The Ark has samples from a snow leopard. It also has samples from a Columbian spider monkey. The Frozen Zoo was formed 50 years ago by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. It has preserved samples from 1,300 species. The black-footed ferret is one of them.  

The Wildlife Alliance told CNN that the Colossal project and others like it can help ensure the future of Earth's biodiversity.

“No one (group) can do it alone,” the Wildlife Alliance said in a written statement.  

Reflect: Why does saving living things for the future matter to you?

Photo of snow leopard from Wikimedia Commons.