China has claimed it has successfully cloned the first Tibetan goats using the same technique that produced the world’s first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep.
Scientists said the goat clones were created by somatic cell cloning, which involves transferring the nucleus of an adult cell into a new egg cell. The egg is then implanted into a surrogate mother who gives birth to a baby that has zero percent of her DNA but 100 percent of the donor’s.
The firstborn weighed 7.4 pounds and “is healthy,” according to a video from state news channel China Central Television, but there was no mention of the second goat.
They are cloned from huge, prize-winning male goats that are desirable for breeding.
Chinese scientists said they are doing this to “restore and preserve” the genetic material of “outstanding individuals” in the population – a difficult process for breeders and herders.
The firstborn weighed 7.4 pounds and “is healthy,” according to a video from state news channel China Central Television, but there was no mention of the second goat
“Cloning allows the genetic information to be completely copied,” said lead researcher Su Jianmin of Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University.
‘By making full use of excellent breeding rams, and by fully exploiting and expanding their genetic resources, we are making available our scientific and technological strength to increase the income of local farmers and develop the local breeding industry.’
The team plans to clone the goats that produce the largest amounts of valuable wool, scientists said.
For the long term, they want to clone the male goats that can produce the best wool producers.
Chinese media reports announcing the scientific breakthrough were sparse on details, but they did reveal that the animal was produced by somatic cell cloning in Qinghai province.
This is the same technique used to produce the famous Scottish sheep Dolly.
Somatic cell cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer or simply nuclear transfer, is simple in concept but difficult in execution.
The DNA is extracted from the cell of a donor, in this case a body cell, as indicated by the word ‘somatic’.
The DNA from an egg is then removed and replaced with the donor’s DNA.
This altered egg cell is then implanted into a surrogate mother, who gives birth to a baby that is genetically identical to the animal that donated the body cell.
In the Tibetan goats, the somatic cell DNA came from three ‘excellent breeding rams’, and the egg from a single ewe.
These rams were the cream of the crop, each weighing nearly 900 pounds and winning prizes in breeding competitions.
The baby is with its surrogate mother. The two are not genetically related. Scientists plan to use cloning to enrich Tibet’s goat population with rams that can sire goats with higher quality wool
Dolly, born in 1997, was the first animal to be cloned via nuclear transfer. The DNA of an adult sheep was implanted into an egg cell
In Dolly’s case, the cells came from the mammary gland of the donor, a six-year-old Finn Dorset sheep. (Her name was a joke on the scientists’ part, a reference to the anatomy of American singer Dolly Parton.)
The egg from which Dolly grew came from a Scottish Blackface sheep and was implanted into it after receiving donor DNA.
Chinese scientists used the same technique for the cloned goats.
Although the scientists didn’t reveal much about the breakthrough, they did provide some details: Out of 43 gestation goats, the initial pregnancy rate was 58.1 percent.
A scientist holds the cloned Tibetan baby goat, which Chinese state media said is in good health
To create somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) clones, scientists take DNA (red circle) from tissue and insert it into eggs (yellow) with the DNA (green) removed. The scientists then turn certain genes on or off to help the cells multiply (right)
As with in vitro fertilization in humans, not every attempt to implant an embryo is successful.
After 120 days, 37.2 of the surrogate mothers were still pregnant. A goat’s pregnancy usually lasts about 150 days.
The new baby also has a brother or sister, but state media reports provided no details.
CCTV reported that the cloning efforts will “increase the income of local farmers and herders.”
The news comes shortly after the announcement in January that a Chinese-produced monkey clone from another team of scientists had reached the age of two in good health.
The news comes shortly after the announcement in January that a Chinese-produced monkey clone from another team of scientists had reached the age of two in good health.
The team also used somatic cell nuclear transfer to produce the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta), a primate species known for its close relationship with humans.
The rhesus monkey is interesting because it is anatomically and physiologically close to humans and is already widely used in human health research.
Scientists have raised ethical concerns about cloning, even though scientific efforts have so far only succeeded in cloning mammals.
And in some cases, such as with the Chinese monkey, success came after a series of failures: individuals dying shortly after birth.
Scientists agree that human cloning would be unethical.