{"id":162686,"date":"2026-02-03T23:41:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T23:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162686\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T23:41:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T23:41:07","slug":"san-diego-zoo-alliance-illumina-partner-to-protect-fragile-biodiversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162686\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego Zoo alliance, Illumina partner to protect ‘fragile biodiversity’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Southern<\/a>The Southern white rhino Edward samples a birthday box of hay in 2020. Southern white rhinos are connected to the effort to revive the critically endangered northern white rhino, which has deposits in the Frozen Zoo. (File photo by Ken Bohn\/San Diego Zoo Global)<\/p>\n

Illumina and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance<\/a> announced a sequencing agreement Tuesday for the Frozen Zoo, a collection of biological samples from threatened and endangered species.<\/p>\n

Illumina<\/a>, which specializes in DNA sequencing, will work on up to 4,000 samples representing 1,300 species in the Frozen Zoo. The data collected will be used for research into wildlife medicine, evolutionary biology and biodiversity preservation, according to a company statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIllumina is proud to partner with SDZWA to power the next era of the Frozen Zoo,\u201d said Cande Rogert, vice president and global head of advanced sciences at Illumina. \u201cThis collaboration is a wonderful example of the way multiomic technologies can activate the potential of these critical biodiversity biobanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiomic research is a biological analysis approach in which the data consists of multiple \u201comes,\u201d such as the genome, epigenome and microbiome.<\/p>\n

Biobanks such as the Frozen Zoo serve as a repository of \u201cincreasingly fragile biodiversity,\u201d the statement continues. By sequencing those collected samples, researchers can gain insights that help protect species and promote ecological resilience. <\/p>\n

Stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, the collection includes cells, embryos and gametes from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, plants, marine invertebrates and insects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis collaboration marks a new era of genomic discovery that will accelerate our capacity to halt and reverse biodiversity loss,\u201d said Megan Owen, the alliance\u2019s vice president of conservation science. \u201cThe next fifty years of the Frozen Zoo will rely on a global network of conservation scientists, as well as scalable multiomic technology to maximize the impact of biobanked samples.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illumina will generate whole-genome sequencing data from samples representing wildlife in the Frozen Zoo, which will be made available for research to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and its collaborators.<\/p>\n

A selection of the samples will be available for collaborative research projects, where Illumina\u2019s multiomic solutions will \u201chelp conservation researchers unlock information about genetic diversity and population history,\u201d officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father, Dr. Kurt Benirschke, founded the Frozen Zoo way back in 1975, believing it was important to preserve the DNA of rare and endangered species, but not knowing exactly why or how,\u201d said Rolf Benirschke, chair of the SDZWA Board of Trustees. \u201cIf he were alive today, he would be smiling knowing that his vision has led to this important collaboration with Illumina that will dramatically expand and amplify the science of conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Southern white rhino Edward samples a birthday box of hay in 2020. Southern white rhinos are connected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19093,28380,74,76,75,16707],"class_list":["post-162686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-biotech","tag-illumina","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-zoo-wildlife-alliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}