James Brereton
Conservation Scholar
- Qualifications MSc, BSc (Hons), CET, AET, FHEA
Project:
PhD investigating “Wildlife Cryoconservation: Development of biobanking strategies to halt and reverse biodiversity loss”.
I am delighted to be a Conservation Scholar at Chester Zoo. I’m studying my PhD with both Chester Zoo and Nottingham Trent University, and I’m investigating cryoconservation strategies globally. Before starting as a Conservation Scholar, I completed my Masters in Wild Animal Biology at the Royal Veterinary College and Institute of Zoology in London. After completing this MSc, I worked alongside a range of UK zoos including Blackpool Zoo, ZSL London Zoo and Beale Wildlife Park (which is where I got married!) on student-related research projects.
But what is cryoconservation, you may well be wondering. Cryoconservation is the science of freezing animal tissues – particularly eggs and sperm, though also somatic cells like ear and liver cells. These tissues are deep frozen in liquid nitrogen, where they can remain in suspended animation for tens or even hundreds of years. The role of these collections of frozen tissues, or biobanks as we call them, is to keep a backup of material that can be used to reintroduce genetic diversity into threatened species. While this sounds like science fiction, there have already been many successes in cryoconservation.
The aim of my PhD is to investigate the current prioritisation strategies of biobanks globally: in other words, what are we deciding to freeze. I’ll also be investigating the types of challenges that cryoconservationists are currently facing, and how we could strategically use our frozen samples to best support the genetic diversity of threatened species in breeding programmes. You might say it’s a cool project. Hopefully, the information gathered from this PhD should help us to understand the role that cryoconservation plays, and could play, in the future of species conservation.
Supervisors names:
Dr Samuel White (Nottingham Trent University)
Dr Sue Walker (Chester Zoo)
Dr Andrew Mooney (Dublin Zoo)
Professor Philippe B Wilson (Nottingham Trent University)