Australian scientists have produced cloned embryos of the gastric-brooding frog, which was known for giving birth through its mouth.
- This extinct animal swallowed its eggs, brooded the young in its stomach, and gave birth through its mouth.
- Even though the gastric-brooding frog became extinct in 1985, a team of researchers was able to recover cell nuclei from frozen frog tissue collected in the 1970s and implant it into a fresh egg from another frog species.
- Some of the eggs then developed into an early embryo stage, but unfortunately none of the implanted eggs survived longer than a few days.
- Even though the process has not yet worked, scientists are confident that the hurdles ahead are technological and not biological and eventually the cloning of this species will succeed.
- Scientists would also like to use this technology as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world’s amphibian species are in major decline.
- They are also interested in the gastric-brooding frog’s ability to shut down the secretion of digestive acids because it might help develop treatments for gastric ulcers in humans.
Want to learn more? Read the full story here: Scientists clone extinct frog that births young from its mouth