The Trouble With Tribbles: Cloning Pitfalls

SloppyElvis writes: "Millie, The University of Tennessee's cloned cow, has been found dead in her pasture. Spokespersons for the University report the cause of death is unknown.CNN.com has the story. Studied individuals would attribute this and the sundry other cloned-animal deaths to DNA telomere degradation. During mitosis (cell-division), the far ends of the chromosomes are known to degrade and shorten. By the time an animal reaches adulthood, this degradation is significant, and it is transferred to the cloned offspring. Many speculate that when these frayed ends reach a terminal length, your time is up, so to speak. On March 9, 2001, MSNBC reported, "Hundreds of couples have volunteered for an experiment to create cloned children despite strong religious and scientific opposition". I wonder how these people would feel when their clones simply expired? Does anybody remember Blade Runner?"

Comments

Organs

[Xenophon Fenderson,]

Cloning sure beats having to wait for somebody to die (or "disappear"). Plus, you wouldn't have to worry about all that tissue rejection nastyness.

Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16

Re:Implications for human cloning.

[msouth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it really just mean that we should grab a couple of cells early on, every time someone(/thing) is born, preserve them, and then we'll have young cells should we (or the thing itself) decide that cloning would be advantageous?
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the censored part of the story

[msouth]

Researchers were checking to see if the animal was the victim of a lightening strike or ingested a toxin, including poisonous weeds. They are also looking into the appearance of several crop circles in surrounding fields on the same night. No other animals at the station appeared to be affected.
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Re:Telomere shortening

[Guppy]

"The problem is that there are a number of good counter examples."

Just wanted to add another note to an excellent comment. Cloning does not necessarily result in shortened telomeres. I don't have a reference handy, but other researchers have reported that by modifications in the cloning procedure can shorten or lengthen the telomeres in the animal produced, even making them significantly longer than normal -- although what impact this has on life expectancy is stll uncertain.

Nitpicking

[addaon]

To nitpick, the 'parent' of a clone wouldn't have to worry about his or her clone 'expiring.' The telomeres of the clone start out the same length as the parents; assuming they decrease at a constant length (I don't know one way or the other), the clone would die of old age at the same time as the parent, not before, leaving the buyer with little to complain about, as they'll be rather dead themselves.

Re:Nitpicking

[SuiteSisterMary]

Exactly. So if you've got, say, 40 years left, being, say, 40 when the clone was made, the clone would expire in ~40 years. In theory, you'd die at pretty much the same time. You'd be (base age) + (TTL) and the clone would be (TTL), but you'd both die (TTL) years after the cloning occured.

Re:Nitpicking

[Phillip2]

"The telomeres of the clone start out the same length as the parents"

The would be the same length as the parents at the time. Not the same length as the parents were when they were concieved.

"assuming they decrease at a constant length (I don't know one way or the other)"

They would be expected to decrease at a constant rate with respect to the number of cell divisions rather than time.

Phil

Re:Nitpicking

[Phillip2]

You are still assuming that the number of divisions is constant with time. I suspect that cells divide more frequently early in life, which means that cloned human would be expected to die earlier than their parent.

Of course this is making the assumption that telomere shortening will result in death. For which we have no evidence.

Phil

scared to death

[mozkill]

i heard that Elvis was seen in the area, and reportedly, it had scared the cow to death. i dont know about you, but I would be scared too.

Implications for human cloning.

[Zaphod B]

I suppose that what this means is that if humans are going to be cloned, we are going to need to get back to the biological sense of maturity, meaning that (warning: this is a bit crude) as soon as you can get it up, it's time for cloning. Cloning 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds, etc. in order to prevent the neural degradation.

On the other hand, what is the only group who are both young and interested in science?

You guessed it. Do we really want to create a race of persons who will grow up to be engineers? <shudder> <twitch>

Zaphod B

Re:Implications for human cloning.

[Phillip2]

"I suppose that what this means is that if humans are going to be cloned, we are going to need to get back to the biological sense of meaning that (warning: this is a bit crude) as soon as you can get it up, it's time for cloning."

The notion is that if cells do not periodically go through the a meiotic or germ line division, during which time they would renew their telomeres the cells are going to croak. So even if we started young we would get into trouble, as cloned individuals would be unable to have children by the same means and would probably get old earlier.

I call this "a notion" because there is remarkably little in practice to show this is how it would be.

I can't for the life of me understanding this cloning malarky. There are some limited technological uses for it sure, but for humans? It makes no sense. The alternative is cheap, reasonably reliable, and a lot of fun. Why the hell would anyone want to go the cloning route.

Phil

Save your genes now!

[peccary]

So, for cloning to be useful for us humans, given the likely near-term progress in both the cloning arena and the anti-aging arena, the most practical strategy for those interested in possibly cloning themselves or their loved ones or their loved ones' body parts in the future, would be to bank their genetic material NOW before the telomeres degrade any further.

New business plan for Alcor?

I get the last post again.

[jerkface]

17th post. 17 is a Gaussian prime. read more here

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Re:I get the last post again.

[jerkface]

So it's not exactly 17. But you get the idea. 22=17+5. Law of fives. That must be why I made the mistake.

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Telomere shortening

[Phillip2]

Has been stirring up lots of excitement for many years, largely because it potentially impacts on aging processes and cancer formation. Anything which might have an impact on these two functions of course is er, a cash cow if you will excuse the pun. It probably makes sense to treat information produced under these circumstances with a pinch of salt.

The problem is that there are a number of good counter examples. For instance mice have telomeres some 10 times the length of humans. Do they live longer therefore than humans. Well no. Also it seems that telomerase (the enzyme which lengthens the telomeres) is active in mouse cells. In other words there telomeres do not get any shorter.

Telomere shortening is an attractive proposition of course for causing many things, but at the moment the evidence is lacking. It might be relavant. Alternatively it might have nothing to do with anything much!

Phil

Aargh!! Spelling errors at CNN??

[Muad'Dave]

"Researchers were checking to see if the animal was the victim of a lightening strike..."

What's lightening? I guess they were checking to see if the cow was accidentally filled with helium? Oh, they meant lightning...

and they don't know why she died?

[spacefem]

Hello... aliens...

But all ET's aside, I wish I had a clone, we'd be like best friends.
Me: Hey, want to go out for taco bell?
Clone: Hell yeah, I love taco bell!
Me: Awe, clone, your my best friend. Hey, I haven't checked slashdot all afternoon!
Clone: Oh, don't worry, I checked it for you, I even posted our thoughts on the AT&T legal battles, you sounded really smart and got a 5.
Me: Wow, thanks! Hey, eat this taco I dropped on the floor and tell me if I'd be able to taste the floor scum on it.
Clone: Okay!

Never mind that my clone would be 20 years younger than me, of course, by the time I get a clone we'll find some way around that.

Maybe she O.D.'d on grass

[Zen Mastuh]

When I was in school a cop came into our class one day and warned us about the dangers of grass. Alas, it's too late to save poor Millie now...