A British-led project called “Frozen Ark” is preserving the DNA of endangered species before they disappear.

“Many of these species are going to go extinct before we even know they exist,” said John Armour, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Nottingham, which is host to the project.

“The whole idea of the Frozen Ark is to get and preserve that material for future generations before it's too late.” Launched a little over a decade ago by British scientists Bryan Clarke, who died last year, and his wife Ann, the Frozen Ark network now has 22 partners worldwide.

In all 48,000 samples have been collected belonging to some 5,500 species.

“The most extreme positive use of it would be de-extinction, where you would use that material as the basis to recreate the organism from its genetic information,” said Armour.

About 41 per cent of amphibians and 26 of mammal species are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

bbabo.Net