A few years ago, just in the months in which we were writing the\u00a0LIFE NatSalMo project, an illuminating article appeared on the pages of the magazine “The Biologist”\u00a0on the importance of cryobanks\u00a0in the conservation of species,\u00a0written by\u00a0William\u00a0Holt,\u00a0professor at the University of Sheffield and honorary\u00a0researcher in\u00a0Conservation Biology for the survival of species\u00a0of the\u00a0prestigious\u00a0Smithsonian\u00a0Institution.<\/p>\n
Holt remembered\u00a0when, in the late 1940s, a young postdoc discovered\u00a0in a fortunate and accidental way that the sperm cells of mammals and chickens could be frozen and subsequently successfully thawed in the presence of glycerol.<\/p>\n
In the following decades, the development of increasingly efficient protocols and cryoprotectors led to the large-scale application of the use of cryopreservation of sperm and cryobanks in the field of animal husbandry and in the treatment of human infertility. The habit therefore spread of looking at cryopreservation practices purely as a selection and artificial insemination tool for the genetic improvement of domestic breeds of economic interest.<\/p>\n
Despite this, some conservation biologists\u00a0began\u00a0to focus on cryobanks in the context of safeguarding endangered species, animated by an important intention:\u00a0to overcome\u00a0a major limitation\u00a0inherent in\u00a0species\u00a0reproduction programs\u00a0represented by the negative effects of inbreeding of reproducers. The cryobanks\u00a0that were created\u00a0to support\u00a0the\u00a0recovery projects of\u00a0species\u00a0at risk\u00a0have the single major task of preserving the broadest natural genetic diversity\u00a0in order\u00a0to support the well-being and survival of wild populations, fighting inbreeding\u00a0and its deleterious effects .<\/p>\n
One of the first successful applications of this technology was the recovery of the black-footed ferret Mustela nigripes<\/em>, which from the end of the 1980’s was saved from extinction thanks to a breeding program that led to the reintroduction of more than 4,000 individuals in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Frozen semen samples of the\u00a0original founder\u00a0reproductives\u00a0are still used,\u00a0sparingly,\u00a0to support existing populations\u00a0and genetic analyzes show\u00a0unequivocally\u00a0that the offspring\u00a0originating from\u00a0these inseminations have lower levels of inbreeding than individuals born from natural reproduction.<\/p>\n To date\u00a0the challenges of cryopreservation are\u00a0still\u00a0many: not all species – from mammals to fish – respond well to the freeze-thaw cycle of the semen. However, the development of increasingly efficient protocols and the programming of appropriate artificial fertilization schemes represent a fundamental step that allows cryobanks to provide conservation projects with a useful tool\u00a0for\u00a0not losing the original biodiversity.<\/p>\n The LIFE project Nat.Sal.Mo. was born from the need to test a tool useful for overcoming some limits of the traditional artificial reproduction programs to support the native salmonid populations, which risk producing autochthonous material, but at the same time “zootechnical”. The future creation of a breeding park will be able to count on wild genetic resources also in the years to come. These are the cornerstones\u00a0from which\u00a0our project idea was born, later supported by the European Community for its innovative content, in combination with other habitat protection activities and the participation of local communities. In a nutshell: Animal husbandry? No thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few years ago, just in the months in which we were writing the\u00a0LIFE NatSalMo project, an illuminating article appeared on the pages of the magazine “The Biologist”\u00a0on the importance of cryobanks\u00a0in the conservation of species,\u00a0written by\u00a0William\u00a0Holt,\u00a0professor at the University of Sheffield and honorary\u00a0researcher in\u00a0Conservation Biology for the survival of species\u00a0of the\u00a0prestigious\u00a0Smithsonian\u00a0Institution. Holt remembered\u00a0when, in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=6480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/revisions\/"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6481,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/revisions\/6481\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6478\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=6480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=6480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenproject.info\/wpg\/natsalmo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=6480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}