In an effort to save the endangered Sumatran rhino species from extinction, a team from the Max Delbrück Center has successfully grown stem cells and mini-brains from the skin cells of Kertam, the last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia who died in 2019. The team's goal is to use these cells to create
Sumatran rhino Kertam on the island of Borneo. Credit: Ben Jastram, Leibniz-IZW
The Sumatran rhinoceros, the world’s smallest and most ancient rhino species, was once widely distributed throughout East and Southeast Asia. However, poaching and habitat destruction have severely reduced the population, with only a few dozen individuals remaining in the rainforests of Sumatra and the Indonesian portion of Borneo. The rarity of these remaining individuals makes mating encounters increasingly scarce, contributing to the species’ endangered status.
In the scientific journal iScience, the team led by first author Zywitza and last author Diecke has now reported an initial success: they have generated induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells for short, from Kertam’s skin samples. These cells have two key advantages. First, they are able to divide infinitely and therefore never die; and second, they are able to transform into any cell type in the body.
“To the best of our knowledge, mini-brains like these have only been obtained from mouse, human, and non-human primates so far,” says Frahm-Barske. “So we were very pleased to see that the stem cells we generated from the Sumatran rhino formed organoids quite similar to those of humans.” However, she added that the team had to treat the human and rhino iPS cells slightly differently in order to generate the brain organoids.
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