• Animal Systematics, Evolution and Diversity
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.154-158
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• 2020

The Asian crested ibis Nipponia nippon is one of the world's most endangered species. Except for the Sanxii population from China, it is known that all of the crested ibis populations from East Asia have been extinguished. In these days, most of them are being inbred as captive populations in China, South Korea, and Japan, which caused their low expected genetic diversity. Microsatellite markers are well known as a suitable DNA marker for exploring genetic diversity among captive populations of a variety of endangered species. In the present study, ten microsatellite markers were developed for the captive populations of the South Korean crested ibis, which were employed to examine the level of genetic diversity with the two founders from Sanxii, China and the 70 descendants of them. As a result, the mean number of gene diversity, observed heterozygosity, and expected heterozygosity of the captive population were 0.70, 0.84, and 0.70 respectively. It revealed that the captive population of South Korea is as genetically more stable than we expected. In addition, the principal coordinates analysis and genetic structure analyses showed that the captive population of N. nippon can be divided into the two different genetic groups. The developed microsatellite markers here could be helpful for crested ibis conservation in East Asian countries such as China and Japan as well as South Korea.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.1026-1034
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• 2000

As described here, most recently developed methods for improving reproduction performance of domesticated animals such as cattle, swine and chicken have been considered to be also usable for restoring some sorts of endangered and/or extinct wild animals in the very near future. Especially, the techniques for in vitro storage of gametes obtained from dead animals shortly after the death, probably 24 h following the sacrifice are also available for obtaining some of experimental specimens. In case of the endangered animals, nobody will be allowed to use any tissues from the living animals, therefore, e.g., the use of skin tissues from these bodies is another possibility of restoring the living animals. Regarding the use of skin tissues, the most highly usable tools must be the cloning techniques for reviving rare cells from the living body. Most possible techniques for cloning cells is nuclear transfer from rare species to highly relative species, and this is the case of germ cells, e.g., primordial germ cells (PGCs) of avian species. One of the possibilities is the nuclear transfer of Crested Ibis (Nipponia nippon) to the PGCs of chicken, resulting in the PGCs with transferred nucleus from the ibis. In mammalian species, the same procedure as in the case of birds would be successful, e.g., the removed nucleus from Giant Pandas will be transferred to the cell, such as somatic cells or germ cells from black bears or lesser pandas, leading to the production of transnucleared cells in the body of female black bears. These two cases are most promising techniques for reviving endangered animals in the world, particularly in Asian countries, mainly in China. As a conclusion, possible production of cloned animals carrying transnucleared cells from endangered animals, such as Giant Pandas and Crested Ibis, may be reproduced gradually in the near future. Scientists are, therefore, required to convert the paradigm from domestic animals to wild animals, including endangered and/or extinct animals on the earth.