The northern white rhino is extinct in the wild due to poaching, and only two females remain at a sanctuary in East Africa.
Now, scientists from Osaka University in Japan have derived stem cells from northern white rhino skin cells. They then made the stem cells turn into the precursors of sperm and egg cells, called primordial germ cells.
The team hope that lab-grown embryos could save the animals from extinction by producing embryos to be implanted into southern white rhinos, a closely related subspecies of which about 20,000 remain in southern Africa.
The scientists have published their latest research in the journal Science Advances.
First author, Dr Masafumi Hayashi from Osaka University said 'This is the first time that primordial germ cells of a large, endangered mammalian species have been successfully generated from stem cells. Previously, it has only been achieved in rodents and primates.'
The scientists involved in this research belong to the BioRescue consortium, which aims at developing advanced reproduction technologies for saving critically endangered mammals such as the northern white rhino.
