I don't care too much if they age well or not...
How did they taste?
Dolly the sheep clones have aged well, say scientists
Scientists working on a long-term study of the world’s first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, have reported that cloned sheep age normally in a paper published today in Nature Communications. Dolly’s life started in the laboratory. Scientists replaced the nucleus of an egg cell with a nucleus taken from a somatic cell to …
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Tuesday 26th July 2016 17:29 GMT Howard Hanek
I'm Curious
Was there some other reason besides science WHY anyone decided on cloning a sheep first? In this age of gender confusion this may have been a breakthrough of another kind that the public wasn't aware of. Is there a social side to this story we haven't been told? A wealthy donor perhaps? From the Gulf States?
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Wednesday 27th July 2016 10:35 GMT phuzz
Re: I'm Curious
That's actually a good question, you'd normally expect rats or mice to be the first cloned animals.
I assume there's an agriculture angle to why a sheep was picked (some funding came from the Min. of Ag.), but I suspect it just happened that the researchers who got there first happened to be using sheep.
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Tuesday 26th July 2016 17:30 GMT Tony Haines
Gah.
"The birth of Dolly in 1996 made headlines and captured people’s attention as it provided evidence that a living creature could be completely cloned."
Ouch.
Dolly was the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell. An important word in that sentence is "mammal" - people have been cloning "living creatures" (like frogs) since the late '50s. Where this assumes an intent to suggest cloning a pre-existing, multicellular organism as opposed to - for example splitting a 2-cell embryo to create identical twins.
To preempt any other pedants, I should say that - given strict definitions of "clone" and "living creature" - a colony of bacteria on a plate which are all descended from a single cell is a clone, as is a tree grown from a cutting (and the word "completely" is superfluous in the quoted sentence).
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Wednesday 27th July 2016 00:43 GMT Allan George Dyer
Re: Gah.
Unfortunately, your pre-empting gives me an additional pendant opportunity... a chimera (no, not the mythological creature, a single organism composed of cells from different zygotes) could be a partial clone, and gardeners routinely graft two plants into a single organism, so, keep the "completely".
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Saturday 30th July 2016 22:56 GMT Tony Haines
Re: Gah.
While I take your point, to be really pedantic, a clone is a cell line or organism that is genetically identical to the cell or organism from which it was derived, so I believe that (officially at least) it's all or nothing. It's tautologous - like calling something "completely unique".
In your examples, you could say that the chimera was composed of several different clones, or that a particular part of the plant was clonal.
Now, I must admit that I wouldn't balk at someone talking about an organism being a partial clone of another - I'd know what they meant (assuming, at least, they knew what they were talking about). However, the point I was originally intending to make about the word 'completely' is - it's unnecessary in the sentence given. The word 'partial', if necessary, would not be superfluous - just as it's not in the phrase 'almost unique'.
I've probably triggered a few more pedantic alarm bells in this post, and for that I apologise. Any grammatical corrections I will concede, but if you spot a biological wrinkle I've apparently neglected, please be reassured that there are several interesting cans of worms I've elected to leave unopened.
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Tuesday 26th July 2016 17:38 GMT NotBob
So cloned animals age as well as a control group of a different breed of older sheep. Couldn't be arsed to use the same breed or the same age? Sloppy.
Interesting about only one of the clones suffering from OA like the original. That might be an avenue for useful research if the scientists are willing to do their damn jobs instead of calling the nearest group of quadripeds a "control group."
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Tuesday 26th July 2016 19:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Good or bad development?
I can understand the value from a scientific point of view but on the other end I'm also quite worried about the effects all this might have in the longer run. Like the 'harmless' genetically altered vegetables. Fully harmless scientists say, but as with all those things you won't see instant results (good or bad).
And that's what worries me: because if it does turn out to be bad then good luck turning things around again.
But yeah, the usual 'time will tell' all over again.
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Wednesday 27th July 2016 09:17 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Good or bad development?
"Like the 'harmless' genetically altered vegetables."
I don't know if it's still the practice but genetic engineering techniques used to include splicing antibiotic resistance genes in as markers. That was the worrying biological aspect to me. The worrying business aspect, of course, was the behaviour of Monsanto.
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Wednesday 27th July 2016 18:25 GMT oicur0t
Re: Good or bad development?
"Like the 'harmless' genetically altered vegetables. Fully harmless scientists say, but as with all those things you won't see instant results (good or bad)."
That's why GMOs are heavily tested and, after decades of such testing, there is nothing yet to worry about. The science has been done already, and continues to be done on all new varieties. If you think otherwise then I would review your sources of information for bias.
A GMO vegetable is chemically the same as it's non GMO counterpart unless it's developed to contain something else, like Bt, which is a naturally occurring pesticide anyway that's already part of your diet and safe for consumption.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
