Ann Clarke on The Frozen Ark

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2017

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tiny tree dwelling snails, partula, were so abundant across French Polynesia that garlands of partula shells would be presented to visitors to the islands. But when immunologist Dr Ann Clarke joined her husband, the late evolutionary biologist Professor Bryan Clarke, on expeditions to research the unique way this species had developed, a study in speciation turned, before their eyes, into a study of extinction. Ann witnessed first-hand the terrifying speed that biological controls, another mollusc introduced to kill a different, larger predatory snail, instead turned on Partula, and within a few short years, drove them to extinction in the wild. The subsequent scramble to save the species resulted in the launch of a global effort called The Frozen Ark to save the genetic resources of all animals which, like partula, face obliteration. The Frozen Ark was founded by Ann, her husband and the late Professor Ann MacLaren and with consortium members around the world, tissue and genetic material from threatened fauna is preserved as an ultimate animal conservation back-up. More than 48,000 samples have been collected by Frozen Ark members in zoos and natural history museums around the world from more than 5,500 different species. Frozen samples inform multiple captive breeding programmes, including at London Zoo, where descendants of partula rescued from extinction, are being bred ready for re-introduction back to their home in French Polynesia. And all this wasn't Ann's main career! As well as admitting to Jim that she was read bedtime stories as a child by the great JR Tolkien and that in her first ever job as a lab technician she helped Nobel Prize winner Sir John Gurdon with his nuclear transfer experiments, Ann also had a long and successful career as an immunologist and embryologist, fuelled by a life long interest in embryonic tolerance and immunity.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
0:08.6	It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.
0:15.3	What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism
0:19.8	and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.
0:23.7	And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject
0:28.4	you might not even have thought you were interested in.
0:30.2	Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,
0:36.1	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello and
0:43.4	Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:55.0	We don't know exactly how many animals there are on planet Earth,
0:59.0	but we do know that a significant fraction of the world's fauna is under threat, much of it due to that
1:05.3	most invasive of species Homo sapiens.
1:08.6	In fact, it's widely accepted that we're in the midst of the sixth great extinction, the fifth being the one during
1:14.0	which the dinosaurs famously disappeared 65 million years ago, but this time
1:18.4	species are disappearing a hundred times faster than would normally be expected. It's a catastrophic loss of animals
1:25.9	that many say could pose a real threat to human existence. Well, so far so depressing, but my guest today, Will I know, provides some cheer.
1:36.0	She's played a key role in the creation of the ultimate animal backup,
1:40.0	a modern day Noah's Ark, which aims to preserve the genetic resources of the world's most endangered species.
1:46.2	An immunologist, Dr Anne Clark, is the last remaining founder member of the Frozen Ark Project project and welcome to the life scientific.
1:55.0	Thank you.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -2892 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.