US announces clone of first at-risk species
UbiQD’s quantum dots could grow food in space, feed astronauts
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.
The slinky predator, named Elizabeth Ann, born Dec. 10 and announced Thursday, is cute. But, watch out — unlike the domestic ferret foster mom who carried her into the world, she’s wild at heart.
“You might have been handling a black-footed ferret kit and then they try to take your finger off the next day,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret recovery coordinator Pete Gober said Thursday.
Elizabeth Ann was born and is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service blackfooted ferret breeding facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. She’s a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988 and whose remains were frozen in the early days of DNA technology.
Cloning eventually could bring back such extinct species as the passenger pigeon. For now, the technique holds promise for helping endangered species, including a cloned Mongolian wild horse born last summer at a Texas facility.
“Biotechnology and genomic data can really make a difference … with conservation efforts,” said Ben Novak, lead scientist with Revive & Restore, a biotechnology-focused conservation nonprofit that coordinated the ferret and horse clonings.
Black-footed ferrets are a type of weasel easily recognized by eye markings resembling a robber’s mask. Charismatic and nocturnal, they feed exclusively on prairie dogs while living in the rodents’ sometimes vast burrow colonies.
Even before cloning, black-footed ferrets were a conservation success story. They were thought extinct — victims of habitat loss as ranchers shot and poisoned prairie dog colonies that made rangelands less suitable for cattle — until a ranch dog named Shep brought a dead one home in Wyoming in 1981.
Scientists gathered the remaining population for a captive breeding program that has released thousands of ferrets since the 1990s.
NASA’s plan to eventually grow vegetables on the moon or Mars could get a significant boost from quantum-dot technology developed by Los Alamosbased startup UbiQD.
That’s what a NASA-funded study at the University of Arizona showed when applying UbiQD’s greenhouse film covering over lettuce crops grown in a controlled environment. Preliminary study results — published in January by Nature Research in its Communications Biology journal — showed a 13% jump in dry edible lettuce volume using orange light, and 9% improvement with red light, generated by UbiQD’s film covering dubbed “UbiGro.”
The study, which began in 2018, aims to develop a prototype greenhouse for crews of astronauts to grow food during extended stays in space. The first phase of research at the university’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center focused on lettuce, considered a high nutrition, fast-growing option for space missions.
The study’s second phase, now underway, will study UbiGro’s impact on tomatoes as well, while also testing UbiQD technology to collect sunlight on the lunar or Mars surface and channel it to an underground greenhouse, where UbiGro would convert it to a different color spectrum for optimal growth.
UbiQD is already selling UbiGro for terrestrial greenhouse operations, backed by company studies that show 5% to 20% jumps in yield depending on the crop. But publication of the NASA study results in a peer-reviewed journal adds a new level of validity that could boost UbiGro sales on Earth, said UbiQD founder and CEO Hunter McDaniel.
“It’s a validating moment,” McDaniel said. “The study shows it actually works.”
Gene Giacomelli, biosystems engineering professor and former founding director of the university’s agriculture center, said the study results are a “win-win” for terrestrial and space applications.
“This technology can change light from less-efficient wavelengths to more efficient wavelengths that can make plants grow better, bigger and faster,” Giacomelli said. “... NASA can use it for future applications in space, and we get a new technology to aid growers here on Earth.”
UbiGro film is made with quantum dots, which are tiny, three dimensional structures that manipulate light in unique ways, bending sunshine into different colors. They’re currently used in everything from transistors and sunscreen to LCD televisions, tablets and smartphones.
The NASA study and journal publication could help alter mainstream belief that only quantity of light matters in plant growth, McDaniel said.
“The study showed that different light spectrum produce substantial changes in yield,” McDaniel said. “That means the quality of light is almost equally as important as quantity.”
Researchers are now studying the effects of different light colors to choose the best spectrums for plant growth.
UbiQD received $825,000 in Small Business Technology Transfer grants from NASA for the study’s first two phases, plus a $100,000 matching grant in January from the state Economic Development Department to further develop commercial applications for UbiQD technology.