SYDNEY, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A team of international researchers may have found a way to save the critically endangered northern white rhino using in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Published on Thursday, the findings show how collaborators successfully extracted sperm from the last living male northern white rhino before he died in March 2018 in Kenya.
But because the only two remaining female northern white rhinos are infertile, scientists had to combine the sample with a female southern white rhino to create a viable hybrid embryo.
In order to get to the stage where a female rhino can be inseminated however, there are a number of steps that still need to be undertaken.
Professor Marilyn Renfree, from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne, who played a key role in the project, said the first step -- harvesting eggs and sperm is one of the most challenging.
"Rhinos are very large (2,000 kg on average), so they have a reproductive tract that is very hard to access," she said.
"Professor Hildebrandt (study author) developed a 150 centimetre-long OPU device to guide the needle to the correct place using a trans-rectal route."
The next challenge will be to transfer the embryos that are being held in frozen storage to a surrogate southern white rhino to establish and carry out a pregnancy.
Researchers also plan to extract oocytes (ovary cells) from the last two living female northern white rhinos.
