A PLACE OF LAST RESORT

Museums Victoria's living biobank is a repository of frozen potential, safeguarding the very essence of the animals that make Australia so remarkable.

- ESME MATHIS

THIS IS A holding place, stockpiling the cells of Australia's most threatened species for resurrection in a potentially desolate future - a frozen archive held in suspended animation as an insurance policy against biodiversity loss. Welcome to the Ian Potter Australian Wildlife Biobank - a final stronghold against Australia's extinction crisis. The biobank is like a "frozen zoo" within the Melbourne Museum that is cryogenically freezing live animal cells in a bid to preserve the genetic diversity of Australia's unique wildlife.

Scientists hope to one day reintroduce this genetic material back into wild populations through cloned lab-grown cells, to help boost a population's genetic diversity - or even bring a species back from extinction.

"The idea behind this [the biobank] is being able to preserve cells from all of our endangered species in a living format," says project lead Professor Andrew Pask, an epigeneticist from The University of Melbourne. "Far down the track...if we have a horrendous bushfire that wipes out a particular species, or so many animals from that population that they're unhealthy, you could use these cells to bring back the [genetic] variation that occurred in that particular region and rewild those animals once the bush is regenerated." The biobank began collecting genetic material in January 2024, following a $500,000 grant from the Australian Research Council Linkage in 2023. At the time of going to press, they had gathered DNA from upwards of 20 species, including the fat-tailed dunnart, brolga, smoky mouse, malleefowl and dusky antechinus. "We're kind of opportunistically collecting everything we can," Andrew says. The biobank aims to cryopreserve the genetic material of more than 100 species over the next three years.