CBS NEWS
Plants and animals are dying off at an unprecedented rate on Earth. Some scientists are looking to outer space for a solution.
The idea is called a lunar biorepository, a facility that maintains and stores plant and animal cells. But instead of on Earth, this would be on the moon.
Why the moon?
“There’s no place on Earth cold enough to do it,” explained Mary Hagedorn, a senior research scientist with the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
Hagedorn has spent the last two decades studying and theorizing modern ways to try and save coral reefs. She is an expert in cryopreservation, the process of freezing biological materials like animal cells at a temperature so cold, it allows them to remain frozen but alive for hundreds of years.
“Let’s imagine that, unfortunately, climate change wiped out 90% of the Great Barrier Reef. Well, in 100 years, we might be able to just give them back all that diversity,” Hagedorn said.
Her inspiration is the Arctic Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway It is a biorepository that keeps seeds at just under 0 degrees Fahrenheit due to the natural temperature of the permafrost. The low temperature and moisture levels in the vault keep the seeds viable for long periods of time.
“Svalbard has done a really great job of saying, ‘OK, we need to preserve seeds. Everything on Earth depends on seeds. And how are we going to do that?’” Hagedorn said.
Hagedorn and her team want to do something similar for animal cells, but they need colder temperatures. At the lunar poles, where deep craters are shaded, temperatures reach as low as minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit or colder.
Preserving these animal skin cells, called fibroblast cells, allows scientists to transform them into sex cells, which is how they clone animals in labs.
In addition to threatened and endangered animals like the African elephant, green sea turtle and great cats, the team at the Smithsonian Institute proposes that the lunar biorepository initially include an array of animal species that serve different purposes, including:
- Those that modify their environment, like coral, beavers, woodpeckers and earthworms.
- Pollinators that support the production of food, like bees, moths and bats.
- Animals that live in extremely warm, cold or acidic environments, like monarch butterflies, polar bears and nematodes.
- Organisms that support the web of life on Earth, like zooplankton, boreal trees and mosses.
Cryopreserved human cardiac stem cells have also recently been sent to the International Space Station.
Challenges in space
As a trial, the Smithsonian Institute collected 10 specimens of the Starry Goby, a fish found in Kane`ohe Bay in Hawaii. The vision is that these cells will be sealed into cryo-packaging and tested under space-like conditions on Earth, followed by a test run on the space station.
How the Smithsonian plans to create cryopreserved cells and test them in space:
Teams at the National Science Foundation’s National Ecological Observatory Network are also collecting nearly 100,000 animal cell samples every year from 81 sites. NEON’s goal is to expand the kinds of cells used in cryopreservation to include sperm and oocytes, which are found in ovaries.
While a lunar biorepository may be a promising idea for preserving Earth’s biodiversity, there are challenges for this program.
