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TOKYO — Japanese scientists have successfully produced cloned mice using freeze-dried cells in a technique they believe could one day help conserve species and overcome challenges with current biobanking methods.

The United Nations has warned that extinctions are accelerating worldwide and at least a million species could disappear because of human-induced impacts like climate change.

Facilities have sprung up globally to preserve samples from endangered species with the goal of preventing their extinction by future cloning.

These samples are generally cryopreserved using liquid nitrogen or kept at extremely low temperatures, which can be costly and vulnerable to power outages.

They also usually involve sperm and egg cells, which can be difficult or impossible to harvest from old or infertile animals.

Scientists at Japan’s University of Yamanashi wanted to see whether they could solve those problems by freeze-drying somatic cells — any cell that isn’t a sperm or egg cell — and attempting to produce clones.

They experimented with two types of mice cells, and found that, while freeze-drying killed them and caused significant DNA damage, they could still produce cloned blastocysts — a ball of cells that develops into an embryo.

From these, the scientists extracted stem cell lines that they used to create 75 cloned mice.

One of the mice survived a year and nine months, and the team also successfully mated female and male cloned mice with natural-born partners and produced normal pups.

The cloned mice produced fewer offspring than would have been expected from natural-born mice, and one of the stem cell lines developed from male cells produced only female mice clones.

“Improvement should not be difficult,” said Teruhiko Wakayama, a professor at the University of Yamanashi’s Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, who helped lead the study published in the journal Nature Communications this month.

“We believe that in the future we will be able to reduce abnormalities and increase the birth rate by searching for freeze-drying protectant agents and improving drying methods,” he told AFP.

‘Very exciting advance’

There are some other drawbacks — the success rate of cloning mice from cells stored in liquid nitrogen or at ultra-low temperatures is between 2 and 5 per cent, while the freeze-dried method is just 0.02 per cent.

But Wakayama says the technique is still in its early stages, comparing it to the study that produced “Dolly” the famous sheep clone — a single success after more than 200 tries.

“We believe the most important thing is that cloned mice have been produced from freeze-dried somatic cells, and that we have achieved a breakthrough in this field,” he said.

While the method is unlikely to entirely replace cryopreservation, it represents a “very exciting advance for scientists interested in biobanking threatened global biodiversity”, said Simon Clulow, senior research fellow at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Conservation Ecology and Genomics.

“It can be difficult and costly to work up cryopreservation protocols and so alternatives, especially those that are cheaper and robust, are extremely welcome,” added Clulow, who was not involved in the research.

The study stored the freeze-dried cells at minus 30ºC, but the team has previously showed freeze-dried mouse sperm can survive at least a year at room temperature and believes somatic cells would do too.

The technique could eventually “allow genetic resources from around the world to be stored cheaply and safely”, Wakayama said.

The work is an extension of years of research on cloning and freeze-drying techniques by Wakayama and his partners.

One of their recent projects involved freeze-drying mouse sperm that was sent to the International Space Station. Even after six years in space the cells were successfully rehydrated back on Earth and produced healthy mice pups.

PUNE, India — Not many people can boast of having candid conversations about planetary conquest with Elon Musk, but for Indian software engineer Pranay Pathole, a friendly chat with the world’s richest man is just a tweet away.

Their unlikely online friendship has blossomed since Pathole was a teenager, with the mercurial billionaire responding to him over hundreds of tweets and private messages with headline-making company updates and even life advice.

This week, the two finally met face to face, when Pathole travelled to the United States — his first trip overseas — to begin a master’s degree there in business analytics.

“He is super genuine. Like, way down-to-earth. He’s humble,” the 23-year-old told AFP beforehand. “The way he takes his time to respond to me... just shows.”

Musk is a prolific user of Twitter, often posting more than 30 times a day to his 103 million followers.

But it remains a mystery why the SpaceX and Tesla boss, with a net worth of $266 billion, maintains regular contact with the young Indian.

“To be very honest, I have no idea. I think he must be like, really intrigued by my questions,” Pathole told AFP from his parents’ upper-middle-class home in the western city of Pune.

Pathole’s account is one of only a small handful that the billionaire frequently replies to — an average of once every two days, based on Musk’s public Twitter posts since the start of 2020.

The first time Musk responded to him was in 2018 when Pathole, then aged 19, pointed out a flaw in Tesla’s automatic windshield wipers.

“Fixed in next release,” Musk replied, with Tesla addressing the issue in a subsequent software update.

His mother and father celebrated by taking him out to dinner that night.

“I was blown away, to be very honest,” Pathole says. “I took multiple screenshots of it and just never wanted the day to end.”

Their later private chats — daily at first — covered “busting myths” about Musk’s past and discussions about why colonising other planets is “essential”, Pathole says.

“I used to ask him dumb questions, silly questions. And he used to take his time to reply to me.”

The time difference between the US and India has done little to hamper the four-year virtual friendship.

“I don’t think he sleeps that often. Because he’s on Twitter, like, the majority of the time,” Pathole says.

‘He’s an unpredictable guy’

Pathole says interactions with Musk have become “much more casual” over the years, and he no longer rushes to share them with friends and family.

“Elon is the same guy in his public persona as well as in his private,” he says.

Musk’s candid, irreverent and often cryptic tweets have sparked wild stock and cryptocurrency price swings, inviting scrutiny by US regulators.

The billionaire investor is also locked in a high-stakes legal battle with Twitter itself over his effort to walk away from an agreement to buy the company, with the trial set to begin in October.

But Pathole rejects suggestions that the billionaire acts with malice. 

“I don’t think that he’s a troll”, Pathole says. “He’s an unpredictable guy.”

Recruited straight out of engineering college to work at Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT firm, Pathole says he was “infamous” for getting into trouble at school — a trait he says helps him better understand Musk.

Having travelled to the US last week — bearing sweets for Musk — he hopes to not only earn his degree at the University of Texas at Dallas but gain work experience at a US company, including any of Musk’s.

“I want to get a job at Tesla on my own merit. It’s not like I want any favours. It would be good if he could interview me,” Pathole says.

After their meeting, Pathole tweeted a picture of the pair, which Musk “liked”.

‘Live on Earth, die on Mars’

Dressed in a black T-shirt in the style of his idol, Pathole can explain the intricacies of reusable rocket boosters and make a philosophical case for space exploration with equal ease.

Often, he quotes the billionaire entrepreneur’s comments verbatim.

“Live on Earth and die on Mars: that is a philosophy that we all share,” Pathole says, adding that he wants to grow old and die with the “red dust of Mars” on his feet.

Pathole has amassed a six-digit Twitter following, adding more every time Musk mentions him in a tweet.

Even offline, Musk is a frequent topic of dinner-table conversation with Pathole’s family and friends.

“Elon is like our family friend,” jokes Pranay’s father Prashant, a media consultant, adding that he and his wife Pallavi, a homemaker, were proud of their son’s passion.

“If he follows Elon Musk, if he wants to settle down on Mars, we don’t mind.”

MIAMI — Enrique Galan is seldom happier than when he disappears deep into the Everglades to hunt down Burmese pythons, an invasive species that has been damaging Florida’s wetland ecosystem for decades.

When not working at his job staging cultural events in Miami, the 34-year-old spends his time tracking down the nocturnal reptiles from Southeast Asia.

He does so as a professional hunter, hired by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to help control the python population, estimated to be in the tens of thousands. 

At night, Galan drives slowly for kilometres on paved roads and gravel tracks, his flashlight playing on grassy verges and tree roots, and the banks of waterways where alligator eyes occasionally glint.

He charges $13 an hour and an additional fee per python found: $50 if it’s up to 1.2 metres and $25 more for each additional 0.3 metres. 

But on this August night, he has an extra motivation.

The FWC has been holding a 10-day python-hunting contest, with 800 people participating. The prize is $2,500 for whoever finds and kills the most pythons in each of the categories — professional and amateur hunter.

And Galan would love to win that money to celebrate the arrival of Jesus, his newborn baby.

Burmese pythons, originally brought to the United States as pets, have become a threat to the Everglades since humans released them into the wild in the late 1970s. 

The snake has no natural predators, and feeds on other reptiles, birds, and mammals such as raccoons and white-tailed deer. 

“They’re an amazing predator,” says Galan in admiration.

Specimens in the Everglades average between 1.8 and 2.7 metres, but finding them at night in the wetland of more than 607,028 hectares takes skill and patience. 

Galan has a trained eye, as well as the courage and determination needed for the job. After two unsuccessful nights, he spots a shadow on the shoulder of Highway 41: he jumps out of his truck and lunges at the animal, a baby Burmese python.

Grabbing it behind the head to avoid being bitten, he puts it in a cloth bag and ties it with a knot. He will kill it hours later with a BB gun. 

A few miles further on, a huge python slithers across the tarmac. Galan again bolts from his truck but this time the snake escapes into the grass, leaving behind a strong musky scent, a defence mechanism.

Galan took an online training course before hunting pythons, but says he learned everything he knows from Tom Rahill, a 65-year-old who founded the Swamp Apes association 15 years ago to help war veterans deal with traumatic memories through python hunting. 

For a few hours, Rahm Levinson, an Iraq war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, hunts with Rahill and Galan. 

“It really helped me through a lot of stuff struggling at home,” he said.

“I can’t sleep at night and having someone to go out at 12 o’clock, two o’clock in the morning, and catch pythons is something productive and good.”

Galan is proud to participate in a project that has eliminated more than 17,000 pythons since 2000. 

“One of the best things that I get out of it is the amount of beauty that I’m just surrounded by. If you just look closely, open your eyes and observe, you’ll see a lot of magic here.”

ILIMANAQ, Denmark — You can only get there by boat or helicopter, but Michelin-starred chef Poul Andrias Ziska hopes his restaurant in remote Greenland, far above the Arctic Circle, is worth the journey. 

The 30-year-old chef relocated his restaurant KOKS from the Faroe Islands in mid-June, leaving behind his relatively accessible address for Ilimanaq, a hamlet of 50 inhabitants hidden behind icebergs on the 69th parallel north. 

Housed in a narrow black wooden house, one of the oldest in Greenland, the restaurant can only accommodate about 20 people per service, and experiments with local produce, including whale and seaweed, with fresh produce almost impossible to find in the harsh climate. 

“We try to focus on as much Greenlandic products as possible, so everything from Greenland halibut to snow crabs to musk ox to Ptarmigan, different herbs and different berries,” the tousled-haired, bearded chef tells AFP.

The young chef previously ran KOKS at home in the remote Faroe Islands, where he won his first star in 2017, his second in 2019, and the title of the world’s most isolated Michelin restaurant.

He plans to return there for a permanent installation, but explains he had always wanted to stretch his gastronomical legs in another territory in the far north, like Iceland, Greenland or even Svalbard. 

He finally chose Ilimanaq, located an hour’s boat trip from Ilulissat, the third-largest town in Greenland and famous for its huge glacier.

Local products

“We just found it more suitable, more fun to do something completely different before we move back in our permanent restaurant,” he tells AFP from his kitchen, set up in a trailer outside the house with the dining area.

With 20 courses, the extensive tasting menu will delight the taste buds for some 2,100 kroner ($280), excluding wine and drinks.

“The menu is exquisite and sends you to the far north and back,” Devid Gualandris, a charmed visitor, tells AFP.

“From the whale bites to the wines, from the freshly caught fish and shellfish to the curated desserts, everything is bursting with flavour.”

While whale meat is a staple food in Greenland and Ziska’s native Faroe Islands, whaling is banned in most of the world and activists have called for an end to the practice. 

An unlikely locale for a gourmet restaurant, Ilimanaq — Greenlandic for “place of hope” — is home to a small community living in picturesque wooden houses, next to hiking trails and more fittingly a luxury hotel, making it an ideal stopover for wealthy tourists seeking to explore new frontiers. 

For Ziska, the customers in Greenland are different.

“There are a lot of people for which the number one priority is to visit Greenland and then they come to our restaurant,” he says.

“In the Faroe Islands we had mainly people interested in coming and eating at our restaurant and then obviously also visiting the Faroe Islands,” the chef explains.

In addition to the adventurers who have already been lured by the Arctic landscape, the Greenlandic Tourist Board hopes the restaurant will also help attract gourmet travellers. 

“The unique combination of high-level gastronomy, the inherent sustainability of the North Atlantic cuisine and the characteristic nature and resources of the Disko Bay, speaks to all our senses,” Visit Greenland’s director, Hjortur Smarason, said when announcing the arrival of KOKS.

A long-overlooked destination, Greenland — an Arctic island territory nine times the size of the UK — welcomed more than 100,000 tourists in 2019, nearly double its population, before Covid cut the momentum.

Smarason said the presence of KOKS “is exactly what we strive for in our effort to reach a certain distinguished kind of guests”. 

The modern day successor to the game-changing 1980-91 Audi Quattro that popularised four-wheel-drive for motorsport and production performance cars, the Audi RS5 Coupe is an enormously capable compact performance two-door, four-seater. 

First introduced in its second generation in 2017 and soon mildly face-lifted in 2019, the RS5 Coupe’s only flaw is perhaps the fact that it is such a well-rounded and accomplished interpretation and evolution of the practical performance Audi coupe, and lacks the foibles and edginess that conversely made its formidable historic predecessor so enduringly charismatic.

Assertive aesthetic

The most powerful iteration of the Audi A5 executive coupe model line, the RS5 Coupe is a handsomely assertive beast rooted in modern Audi design sensibilities, but bearing some small callbacks to the iconic original Quattro, including its rear pillar angle and short, almost fastback-like bootlid. With a long bonnet and elegantly short front overhang, the RS5 visually minimises the Quattro drive-line’s traditionally nose-heavy layout. With enormous gaping grille and slim, scowling headlights, the RS5 Coupe’s stylised aggression meanwhile includes huge front lower intakes, lower lip, defined sills and a discrete rear spoiler.

In addition to lightly restyled bumpers and lights, the refreshed 2019 RS5 Coupe’s already broad wheel-arches are meanwhile slightly widened as another callback to the original Quattro and its distinctively blistered and beefy wheel-arches, even though the link was not heavily underlined in 2017. That said, the RS5 Coupe is a handsomely athletic design in its own right. But with a curvier waistline, more rounded edges and more emphasised styling, is a different animal than the Quattro and its purer, more distilled sense of drama with its use of straight-cut lines, sharp angles and less stylisation.

Prodigious performer

Built on an evolution of the same architectural layout used by the 1980s Quattro with the engine mounted low and forward of the front axle to power all wheels, the RS5’s longitudinally shorter engine is drawn further back for better weighting. Meanwhile its four-wheel-drive system is significantly more advanced in the way it manages power distribution. Probably the most agile application of the Quattro system layout, the RS5 Coupe’s handling is not as starkly different from more balanced but less grippy rear-drive rivals as the original Quattro was compared to its own contemporary rivals.

Powered by a twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6 engine in place of its predecessor’s naturally-aspirated 4.2-litre V8, the RS5 Coupe’s lighter, smaller and more efficient engine, however, gives nothing away in performance or output. Unchanged since its 2019 face-lift, the RS5’s prodigious V6 develops 444BHP at 5700-6700rpm and a mighty 442lb/ft dose of torque throughout a broad, accessible and versatile 1900-5000rpm plateau. Driving its tenaciously grippy Quattro four-wheel-drive through a quick-shifting 8-speed gearbox, and with responsively quick-spooling turbos, the RS5 pounces off the line and rockets through 0-100km/h in just 3.9-seconds.

Character and comfort

If not quite as its high-revving as its wailing high-strung 8,250rpm capable RS5 predecessor or as charismatically burbling as the original Quattro’s turbocharged in-line 5-cylinder engine, the modern RS5’s engine, however, delivers a bigger and wider mid-range torque sweet spot to allow for muscularly effortless on the move acceleration, in addition to an explosively powerful top-end and electronically-governed 250km/h top speed. Meanwhile, and with the aid of its stop/start system, it returns moderate 8.7l/100km combined cycle consumption, for such a high performance car that tips the scales at around 1.7-tonnes.

Taking on different characteristics depending on various driving modes and individually adjustable settings, the RS5 is smooth, refined, quiet and acoustically docile in Comfort mode. However, switching to a more aggressive setting, the RS5 takes on a snarling soundtrack and more vocal exhaust note. An accessible and effortless daily drive with far more luxury and equipment than its distant predecessor, the RS5 is manoeuvrable in town with light Comfort mode steering, refined cabin, high speed stability and reassuring cornering over low traction surfaces.

Quattro control

If too user-friendly for a performance coupe, the RS5’s character and controls become sharper and more focused in Dynamic mode. Meanwhile, with five-link suspension and rear-biased four-wheel-drive making it more crisply eager and agile turn-in than its heavy-nosed historical Quattro predecessor, the RS5 may not quite need the same aggressive driving style to get the best of it. Nevertheless is similarly responds well to throttle lift-off or a dab of braking to shift weight and tighten a cornering, before coming back hard on the throttle for its four-wheel-drive and optional rear “sport” differential to regain traction.

A more rewarding drive when pushed hard and closer to its limits, the RS5 is highly capable through corners, where its four-wheel-drive reapportions power as needed to ensure high levels of road-holding and allows it to carry speed with confidence. Smooth and firm without being uncomfortable over rougher road sections, the RS5’s suspension meanwhile provided good lateral and vertical control. Its supportive sports seats and well-adjustable driving position meanwhile keep one feeling involved of proceedings, while steering is quick and direct, if slightly light and clinical.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Engine: 2.9-litre, twin-turbocharged, in-line V6-cylinders
• Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 86mm
• Compression ratio: 10:1
• Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, direct injection
• Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive
• Ratios: 1st 5.0; 2nd 3.2; 3rd 2.143; 4th 1.72; 5th 1.313; 6th 1.0; 7th 0.823; 8th 0.64
• Reverse/final drive: 3.478/3.204
• Drive-line: Self-locking centre differential, optional rear sport differential
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 444 (450) [331] @5,700-6,700rpm
• Specific power: 153.3BHP/litre
• Power-to-weight: 262BHP/tonne (unladen)
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 442.5 (600) @1,900-5,000rpm
• Specific torque: 207.3Nm/litre
• Torque-to-weight: 354Nm/tonne (unladen)
• 0-100km/h: 3.9-seconds
• Top speed: 250km/h (electronically-governed)
• Fuel consumption, combined: 8.7-litres/100km 
• CO2 emissions, combined: 199g/km
• Fuel capacity: 58-litres
• Wheelbase: 2,766mm
• Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.32
• Unladen/kerb weight: 1,695/1,770kg
• Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion
• Turning Circle: 11.7-metres
• Suspension: Five-link, tubular anti-roll bars
• Brakes: Ventilated discs, 375mm/330mm
• Tyres: 265/35ZR19

By Zenab Ishtay
Aromatherapist and Cosmetologist

With essential oils becoming more popular, their impact on ecosystems also increases. As an aromatherapist, I care about where we extract our resources. Let’s not wait for Earth Day to consider the environmental impact of essential oils. 

Questions about essential oils

What is their impact on the environment? Where do essential oils come from? Should I use essential oils? Are there any environmental controls in place for producing essential oils? These questions are important to ask ourselves before we begin using, producing, selling and buying essential oils.

Fun fact

The Egyptians were the first to record essential oils in history in 1,500 BC. The Egyptians were experts at embalming, using essential oils with strong antiseptic properties so that the body tissues would be well preserved for thousands of years. Since then, people worldwide have been using essential oils for their medicinal properties.

What’s the harm?

The production and extraction of essential oils require a large quantity of flowers, plants and leaves. Aside from the environmental impact associated with producing essential oils, essential oils themselves have an effect.

Each pure oil has its own set of potential ecological and disposal issues. Each essential oil should have a Material Safety Data Sheet that provides toxicity information, flammability warnings and disposal directions.

The harm comes when companies try to produce essential oils without any control, no certifications, unsustainable practices and illegal harvesting. This all may lead to extinction of a species without proper care and legislation. Unsustainable practices and emissions can contribute to environmental harm. You can refer to www.iucnredlist.org to find the list of endangered species.

Becoming a responsible consumer

Consider these points the next time you use or buy an essential oil:

• Essential oils should not be dumped into drains, water courses, or onto the ground

• Don’t use essential oils on pets or at least consult a veterinarian first; pets are more sensitive than humans to essential oils

• Purchase from responsible companies helps reduce the amount of unsustainable harvesting

• Purchase essential oils that are not included in the endangered species list

• Purchase essential oils that are certified as organic

• Most essential oils are highly flammable (particularly tea tree, clove, frankincense, eucalyptus, lavender, lemon and peppermint), requiring extra precautions     when disposing of them or cleaning up a spill

• Flammable oils are considered household hazardous waste and the containers holding those items cannot be recycled

• Essential oils can degrade plastic, so don’t use plastic containers for essential oils

Essential oils are here to stay and can be a more natural solution than traditional chemical and pharmaceutical cures for common discomforts and ailments. However, it’s our responsibility to question companies about farming practices. Without consumers taking the extra step to vet essential oil companies, it’s easy for the industry to fall into harmful ecological practices.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine