Endangered Sheep Cloned

JoeyPea writes "Italian scientists have successfully cloned an endangered sheep, called the European mouflon, which is found in Sardinia, Corsica and Cyprus. A domestic sheep was used as a surrogate. This marks the first time an endangered mammal has been cloned and survived past birth."

Comments

Rescuing species

[pagsz]

The potential for saving endangered species is certainly interesting; however it would require vast ranges of DNA sample to provide any genetic diversity. This would require immediate action and plenty of funding, which in this field may be hard to come by.

Jurassic Park thought: Since the baby mouflon (I think that's right, I'm too lazy to check) was "created" using the egg of a domestic sheep and carried in a domestic sheep, it might be possible to clone long-extinct species. Obviously, this would be for research purposes only (to study anatomy and behavior, which are all but impossible with fossils) because there simply wouldn't be enough genetic material to even think about resurrecting the species (Besides, I'm not too keen on a T-Rex hunting in the woods outside Seattle. It might eat the Sasquatch).

I'll be surprised as Hell (can Hell be surprised?) if anyone actually reads this comment,

Re:Rescuing species

[Kotetsu]

Not as much as you might think. My mother told me she once substituted some duck eggs under a chicken. The ducklings hatched, and followed the hen about as chicks or ducklings follow their mother. When it rained and some big puddles formed, the ducklings went right into the water and started swimming about, while their "mother" hen went crazy trying to get them to come out of the water. Apparently the ducklings grew up behaving like any of the other ducks they had. The biggest deal was probably the hen who couldn't figure out why her chicks kept doing things chickens don't do.

Re:No T. Rex

[ldopa1]

Unfortunately, not only does DNA decay at a slow put perceptible rate, it also decays natuarally while alive.

Every time a cell divides, the end caps for the DNA strand split too. While the caps themselves are very long (30% of the length of the DNA itself), there comes a time when the cap isn't long enough to divide again. When this happens, the DNA unravels and the cell dies. It's a natural anti-aging mechanism.

This is why "Dolly" (the cloned sheep) has a cellular life older than Dolly herself. If you look at Dolly's DNA, you'll see that all of the genes are the same as the adult's, right down to the end-caps. Those end-caps can only divide the same number of times as the parent DNA could divide (-1 for the cloning effort) because the cloned cells "inherited" the end-caps from the old cells. These end caps are called "Teleromes" and scientists have known about them for a long time.

Embryonic Stems cells have a store of hormones that allow them to grow new Teleromes. In this, they are different from normal, adult cells. In addition, Stem cells (both Adult and Embryonic) have the unique ability to become any type of cell in the whole organism. The type of cells they become seems to depend upon a complicated dance of hormones and environmental pressures. Without the hormones present, the stem cells just divide without direction (similar to cancer). If they have the right hormones, they might become nerve cells (to make a brain) or heart muscle cells.

These two reasons are why embryonic stem cell study is incredibly important if we ever want to be able to grow new nerve cells (for victims of MS, Parkinsons, Alzhiemers or CNS injury), heart cells (for your grandfather), or liver cells (for your frat brother who's on his 5th St. Pauli Girl).

Of course, the whole idea of cloning raises a thousand questions. If you clone yourself (a felony) and your clone kills your friend, who's guilty? Law currently states that if a death occurs because of or during the commision of a felony, the person who committed the felony is guilty of murder. That means your clone goes free! Granted, you get the chair or the needle, but still the clone goes free! He (or she) cannot be prosecuted for anything that he or she does. What a way to create a terrorist nation! Think about it:

L-DOPA creates a clone of himself. He then promptly kills L-DOPA(1). L-DOPA claims he is a clone (there's no way to tell) and is thereby blameless (and L-DOPA(1) is dead). He then goes on to clone 50,000 new L-DOPA(2)'s, which then go on a hacking spree the world has never seen. Nobody can prosecute him or any of his clones. The "blame" lies with L-DOPA(1), and because of double jeopardy laws, none of the other L-DOPA's can be prosecuted either...

Not to mention the tax implications... :)