Posted by
timothy
on from the no-two-cats-are-alike dept.
bbsguru writes "When Texas A&M researchers announced the first Cloned Kitty about a year ago, everyone expected to see a Multiplicity-style pair of cats by now. Not so! The clone is genetically identical, but in many other ways totally a different cat. This
CNN Story has details."
> I am genetically identical today to how I was yesterday, but I expect I'll do loads of different stuff.
We change a great deal over time. For example I was blond and blue eyed until I was two and now I'm grey/green eyed and dark haired (what's left of it)
My mother asked a Nurse about this at the time (1960's) and was told that changes like this are quite normal over time.
This did confuse my mother somewhat since it happened to me over a period of 5 minutes when I was left outside a shop with our dog.
Change of API
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Not a Carbon API for a Cat ? Upgrade to Cacoa for full MacOS X Jaguar support.
Re:Nature vs. Nurture
by
ishark
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The coats are different colors. How is this possible?
The color of a cat's coat is a much more complex matter than what it seems. While, of course, genetics applies, there are a lot of "minor" details which are not completely understood. Even in "purebreed" cats you can have a lot of fluctuations in the fur color (there are lots of variations in the "blue" you can see in the Chartreux). While some of them are genetically transferred (and thus selective breeding can enhance/cancel them), for some of them the situation is not so clear, an example being the tortie-shell females (black/red or blue/cream), where the distribution of the color doesn't seem much controllable. From what they show with Cc it also seems that the tabby stripes can show up more or less depending on the individual.
Some more info on the main cat color genes can be found here and even more here.
From the article: "There are millions of cats in shelters and with rescue groups that need homes, and the last thing we need is a new production strategy for cats."
Classic. Did this quote really come from Bob Barker?
I guess..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Now you can have your cat and eat it too! Ha!
-Alf
Re:so it is not a copy cat?
by
frozenray
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
> Tabula rasa, people are blank papers when they're born. Our environment form us.
The extreme points of view ("blank slate" and "all in the genes") have been thoroughly discredited by scientific research. We are both a product of our genes and our environment.
May I suggest reading Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" for an intelligent discussion of the subject? The book is worth its money IMO.
-- "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Re:Impossible to...
by
dubstop
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Like Ryker's transporter double.
I can't remember the episode, but I was very impressed that the double managed to survive alone for years without going insane. There can't be many things that are worse than being alone, without any form of human contact for many years, but here's a few that are close:
being stuck alone and being Ryker.
being stuck alone except for Ryker.
being Ryker.
After contemplating the magnitude of such a tragedy, I don't even have the energy to do the ???, Profit! thing.
Scientists and the Public missing the point
by
Nemus
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Alot of the general public, and unfortunately alot of companys and independent scientists as well, have forgotten what the true purpose and logical extension of cloning is.
Of course there will always be infertile couple who will want use this method to have babies, someday maybe, but otherwise we don't really need cloning to duplicate life forms. We already have a method. Its called sex. And while some arguments can be made for cloning endangered or extinct animals, until we could make a clone that was capable of reproduction, would there really be anything besides a novelty interest in this? I mean sure, yay, you've got a zoo with a thousand pandas. Unfortunately they'll all be dead in x number of years, and you'll have to clone a thousand more. Rather pointless.
The true purpose of cloning is, and should remain, complete and utter mastery of genetics and medical science. This is why the whole stem cell thing is so important, and should not be constarined in the way it is (For those who object to it on moral grounds saying it encourages abortions, it doesn't. The abortion doctor who made sales pitches like that to pregant women would be shot on principle.)
Stem Cell research and the race to human cloning are, objectively, two leaves on the same branch. Both should be refined and mastered to the point where the dream of human immortality is no longer a dream. This should be all about pushing genetics and microbiology to their absolute limits, not trying to make a Bob mark II or Fluffy 3.0 . Cloning a human just for the hell of it though, or trying to bring back to life a dead child or loved one or pet out of hopes for a "replacement" is irresponsible both scientifically, and morally.
So what would be "legitimate" applications of these technologies. Obviously, and one that was a main topic of debate during the stem cell controversy in congress, was the cloning of indivual organs, like hearts and livers. This way, instead of someone having to wait for months or years for a vital heart or liver transplant, a compatible one could be made up on the spot. And, since research into these fields will also yield advances in fields like neurological medicine, the possibility of new arms or legs, or even new eyes or audial organs becomes a possibility.
However, I do disprove of the notion that some people seem to think that we'll be planting out minds into "blank slate" bodies, sometime in the distant future. Thats not just ultra-late term abortion, thats essentially murder, unless something was done to the brain to keep it only restricted to base biological functions, and not the development of a psyche, and even that would be just weird.
And, for the record, I am pro-life, so no flames from pro-lifers on the stem cell stuff like last time.
-- Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
I think it would be intersting to see if the coloring and pattern of the kitten was a product of it's suroundings before and during birth.
For Example, lets say the the mother cat was active, and the cat was born in the summer in warm weather. Would that make the kitten be lighter colored, and have thinner fur? How about an identical Clone where the mother was kept in a dark damp room? Would the kitten show up different because of the suroundings it was in before it was even born? (That is assumeing these babies were created, then artificially inseminated.)
To me that would be an interesting extension on this experiment. TO see exactly how things turn out. And maybe make a major breakthrough in how we think of genitics, and the possability of some other factors that have yet to be discovered in teh development of humans/ animals/ all thoes other things:)
Ohh, sorry about grammar, and spelling mistakes, I am sure their are plenty.
- Ice_Hole
-- "I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology."
Linus Torvalds
Are you listening, George Lucas?
by
Zog+The+Undeniable
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Surely some of those white-suited Stormtroopers should be pink. Or blue.
-- When I am king, you will be first against
the wall.
Re:Impossible to...
by
KDan
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Depends what you mean by raising the dead. If you mean "oh, make a clone of John, educate it, let it grow up to John's age, and you have John again", then obviously that's never going to work, and there was never really any doubt about that. Unless you can reproduce the exact environment of John's life, down to the quark configuration of the entire universe (every little bit can alter events), it's impossible to get John again through that method.
However, another much better method is this: Make a clone of John, keep its brain blank as you grow it (maybe in an accelerated fashion) to John's size, and then transfer John's thoughts to that clone. Of course that requires very advanced brain knowledge to "read" and "write" a brain - assuming that's even possible.
But that would give you immortality (so long as you keep your brain safe).
Daniel
-- Carpe Diem
To get it right...
by
praedor
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You could do the cloning from the embryonic stage. If you impregnate a cat and let the eggs start developing, then select one or two embryos, split them into two (now half-sized) embryos, reimplant them, then let them continue development then you would TRUE clones that went through the same environment during development. The same burst of hormones from the mother at the same time, the same nutritional environment, etc.
The clones being produced of late from adult somatic cells are not good measures of the strength of genes in creating a creature/person. Why? No, NOT because of "nurture" being more important (it isn't). It is because the de facto biological environment en utero is different (different hormone levels from mom, different nutritional conditions, etc...no two pregnancies are the same in this regard particularly from different mothers).
Original cat biologically developed in a certain set of biological conditions en utero. That cat was also produced from properly regulated/formed egg-sperm fusion. Copy cat was produced from a somatic cell which DID contain mutations (inevitable given the basal mutation rate), many genes were silenced or activated in a manner totally different from a normal fertilized egg and all that regulatory machinery has to be unwound to get embryonic development going. This unwinding of regulatory mechanisms is imperfect - hence the MANY MANY failures to get a successful clone; the why behind the huge failure rate (added to mutations).
You end up with a disregulated genome in the embryo that is TOTALLY different than the properly regulated/prepared genome resulting from a standard egg-sperm fertilization event, coupled to a different biological environment en utero and you will NOT get a carbon copy. Can't happen, wont happen.
The time between inserting the nucleus from a somatic cell into an enucleated egg (the standard method of cloning in these circumstances) is too short. Those cells capable of dividing begin dividing almost immediately. There is NOT enough time for the somatic genome to be "reset" (if resetting is truly even possible) to a state equivalent to that of a normal egg-sperm state. Thus you end up with a mishmash of improperly regulated genes in the clone's genome - differences and problems galore. NO carbon copy.
-- In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Like everything else in the news about cloning, the article completely passes over the science.
First, the cat's color pattern was decided by individual skin cells very early in embryonic development. The individual cells multiply, carrying the same color, to become the pattern on the adult cat.
Second, and most notably, calico cats (tortoise shell) carry a color in each sex chromosome - that's why 99.9% of calico cats are female (XX female, although there are some XXY male calicos but they're sterile). Fur color depends on which X chromosome is active, and which one is inactive (curled up, as they say)
So, looking at the picture, you'll notice the clone (cc) has only two colors indicating that it is not only a clone of the donor cat, but a 100% exact genetic clone of ONE cell of the donor cat. The other X chromosome is completely inactive.
That's just my observation from the photo because no news article will ever talk about the science behind the hype.
Re:Look at the photo!
by
goodmanj
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
A quibble regarding the excellent post above: The poster says "The other X chromosome is completely inactive", but actually, the deactivated X chromosome reactivates in the ovaries, so that the eggs all end up with functioning X chromosomes.
The really interesting thing about this is that while Cc is genetically a calico, she looks exactly like a white-patched gray tabby. In all probability, she is the only calico cat on the planet with no orange spots.
Even more interesting, she is probably the only gray cat on the planet who can mate with a gray or black male and give birth to orange kittens!
For a "perfectly normal" cat, Cc is actually a pretty strange critter.
....just goes to show.....
by
Craig3010
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Aggies can't be expected to clone pussy and get it right...
Re:so it is not a copy cat?
by
Anne+Thwacks
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Nope... they have different birth dates, so their star signs are different. Anyone who reads womens' magazines knows star signs are far more important than genes (But Levi's Rule:-)
Actually, the reason that these coats don't look entirely alike is probably entirely genetic. Although, you're correct, it's not predictable or controllable.
When a female cat is conceived, it begins to grow, duplicating its cells. Each of these cells, however, has two copies of the x-chromosome. Only one of these is useful. So, in a random pattern, the cells will switch off one of the chromosomes by forming Barr bodies that surround it. It's a well understood process called Lyonization for anybody interested in looking into it. However, this only happens for females.
One might then ask whether a male cat's clone would look identical. My guess is again that it would not, although Lyonization would not be an adequate explanation. However, I believe that they would look much more similar than any two cloned calico cats (which are all female and whose coats are formed by this mechanism).
I'm glad she was born healthy..
by
0x12d3
·
· Score: 5, Funny
and without 'genetic defects', but if she was born blind do ya think they would've named her Bcc??
Re:so it is not a copy cat?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Rainbow is reserved. Cc is curious and playful. Rainbow is chunky. Cc is sleek.
Hardly surprising. My translation is:
Rainbow is an old cat. Cc is a kitten. Rainbow is chunky. Cc is still growing.
Hey, it was in the parameters.
by
TheConfusedOne
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Obviously they compiled the new cat as: cc -O
-- ---
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Slashdot Mirror
It's both the same cat AND a totally different cat. You changed the results by observing them.
Speaking of making perfect copies of animals Mexican Scientists Perfect Copying :).
--
Yes, we're at a coffee break here. How did you guess?
I am genetically identical today to how I was yesterday, but I expect I'll do loads of different stuff.
Not a Carbon API for a Cat ? Upgrade to Cacoa for full MacOS X Jaguar support.
The coats are different colors. How is this possible?
The color of a cat's coat is a much more complex matter than what it seems. While, of course, genetics applies, there are a lot of "minor" details which are not completely understood.
Even in "purebreed" cats you can have a lot of fluctuations in the fur color (there are lots of variations in the "blue" you can see in the Chartreux). While some of them are genetically transferred (and thus selective breeding can enhance/cancel them), for some of them the situation is not so clear, an example being the tortie-shell females (black/red or blue/cream), where the distribution of the color doesn't seem much controllable. From what they show with Cc it also seems that the tabby stripes can show up more or less depending on the individual.
Some more info on the main cat color genes can be found here
and even more here.
From the article:
"There are millions of cats in shelters and with rescue groups that need homes, and the last thing we need is a new production strategy for cats."
Classic. Did this quote really come from Bob Barker?
Now you can have your cat and eat it too! Ha!
-Alf
> Tabula rasa, people are blank papers when they're born. Our environment form us.
The extreme points of view ("blank slate" and "all in the genes") have been thoroughly discredited by scientific research. We are both a product of our genes and our environment.
May I suggest reading Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" for an intelligent discussion of the subject? The book is worth its money IMO.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
I can't remember the episode, but I was very impressed that the double managed to survive alone for years without going insane. There can't be many things that are worse than being alone, without any form of human contact for many years, but here's a few that are close:
After contemplating the magnitude of such a tragedy, I don't even have the energy to do the ???, Profit! thing.
Of course there will always be infertile couple who will want use this method to have babies, someday maybe, but otherwise we don't really need cloning to duplicate life forms. We already have a method. Its called sex. And while some arguments can be made for cloning endangered or extinct animals, until we could make a clone that was capable of reproduction, would there really be anything besides a novelty interest in this? I mean sure, yay, you've got a zoo with a thousand pandas. Unfortunately they'll all be dead in x number of years, and you'll have to clone a thousand more. Rather pointless.
The true purpose of cloning is, and should remain, complete and utter mastery of genetics and medical science. This is why the whole stem cell thing is so important, and should not be constarined in the way it is (For those who object to it on moral grounds saying it encourages abortions, it doesn't. The abortion doctor who made sales pitches like that to pregant women would be shot on principle.)
Stem Cell research and the race to human cloning are, objectively, two leaves on the same branch. Both should be refined and mastered to the point where the dream of human immortality is no longer a dream. This should be all about pushing genetics and microbiology to their absolute limits, not trying to make a Bob mark II or Fluffy 3.0 . Cloning a human just for the hell of it though, or trying to bring back to life a dead child or loved one or pet out of hopes for a "replacement" is irresponsible both scientifically, and morally.
So what would be "legitimate" applications of these technologies. Obviously, and one that was a main topic of debate during the stem cell controversy in congress, was the cloning of indivual organs, like hearts and livers. This way, instead of someone having to wait for months or years for a vital heart or liver transplant, a compatible one could be made up on the spot. And, since research into these fields will also yield advances in fields like neurological medicine, the possibility of new arms or legs, or even new eyes or audial organs becomes a possibility.
However, I do disprove of the notion that some people seem to think that we'll be planting out minds into "blank slate" bodies, sometime in the distant future. Thats not just ultra-late term abortion, thats essentially murder, unless something was done to the brain to keep it only restricted to base biological functions, and not the development of a psyche, and even that would be just weird.
And, for the record, I am pro-life, so no flames from pro-lifers on the stem cell stuff like last time.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
I think it would be intersting to see if the coloring and pattern of the kitten was a product of it's suroundings before and during birth.
:)
For Example, lets say the the mother cat was active, and the cat was born in the summer in warm weather. Would that make the kitten be lighter colored, and have thinner fur? How about an identical Clone where the mother was kept in a dark damp room? Would the kitten show up different because of the suroundings it was in before it was even born? (That is assumeing these babies were created, then artificially inseminated.)
To me that would be an interesting extension on this experiment. TO see exactly how things turn out. And maybe make a major breakthrough in how we think of genitics, and the possability of some other factors that have yet to be discovered in teh development of humans/ animals/ all thoes other things
Ohh, sorry about grammar, and spelling mistakes, I am sure their are plenty.
- Ice_Hole
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds
Surely some of those white-suited Stormtroopers should be pink. Or blue.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Depends what you mean by raising the dead. If you mean "oh, make a clone of John, educate it, let it grow up to John's age, and you have John again", then obviously that's never going to work, and there was never really any doubt about that. Unless you can reproduce the exact environment of John's life, down to the quark configuration of the entire universe (every little bit can alter events), it's impossible to get John again through that method.
However, another much better method is this: Make a clone of John, keep its brain blank as you grow it (maybe in an accelerated fashion) to John's size, and then transfer John's thoughts to that clone. Of course that requires very advanced brain knowledge to "read" and "write" a brain - assuming that's even possible.
But that would give you immortality (so long as you keep your brain safe).
Daniel
Carpe Diem
You could do the cloning from the embryonic stage. If you impregnate a cat and let the eggs start developing, then select one or two embryos, split them into two (now half-sized) embryos, reimplant them, then let them continue development then you would TRUE clones that went through the same environment during development. The same burst of hormones from the mother at the same time, the same nutritional environment, etc.
The clones being produced of late from adult somatic cells are not good measures of the strength of genes in creating a creature/person. Why? No, NOT because of "nurture" being more important (it isn't). It is because the de facto biological environment en utero is different (different hormone levels from mom, different nutritional conditions, etc...no two pregnancies are the same in this regard particularly from different mothers).
Original cat biologically developed in a certain set of biological conditions en utero. That cat was also produced from properly regulated/formed egg-sperm fusion. Copy cat was produced from a somatic cell which DID contain mutations (inevitable given the basal mutation rate), many genes were silenced or activated in a manner totally different from a normal fertilized egg and all that regulatory machinery has to be unwound to get embryonic development going. This unwinding of regulatory mechanisms is imperfect - hence the MANY MANY failures to get a successful clone; the why behind the huge failure rate (added to mutations).
You end up with a disregulated genome in the embryo that is TOTALLY different than the properly regulated/prepared genome resulting from a standard egg-sperm fertilization event, coupled to a different biological environment en utero and you will NOT get a carbon copy. Can't happen, wont happen.
The time between inserting the nucleus from a somatic cell into an enucleated egg (the standard method of cloning in these circumstances) is too short. Those cells capable of dividing begin dividing almost immediately. There is NOT enough time for the somatic genome to be "reset" (if resetting is truly even possible) to a state equivalent to that of a normal egg-sperm state. Thus you end up with a mishmash of improperly regulated genes in the clone's genome - differences and problems galore. NO carbon copy.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Like everything else in the news about cloning, the article completely passes over the science.
First, the cat's color pattern was decided by individual skin cells very early in embryonic development. The individual cells multiply, carrying the same color, to become the pattern on the adult cat.
Second, and most notably, calico cats (tortoise shell) carry a color in each sex chromosome - that's why 99.9% of calico cats are female (XX female, although there are some XXY male calicos but they're sterile). Fur color depends on which X chromosome is active, and which one is inactive (curled up, as they say)
So, looking at the picture, you'll notice the clone (cc) has only two colors indicating that it is not only a clone of the donor cat, but a 100% exact genetic clone of ONE cell of the donor cat. The other X chromosome is completely inactive.
That's just my observation from the photo because no news article will ever talk about the science behind the hype.
Aggies can't be expected to clone pussy and get it right...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Actually, the reason that these coats don't look entirely alike is probably entirely genetic. Although, you're correct, it's not predictable or controllable. When a female cat is conceived, it begins to grow, duplicating its cells. Each of these cells, however, has two copies of the x-chromosome. Only one of these is useful. So, in a random pattern, the cells will switch off one of the chromosomes by forming Barr bodies that surround it. It's a well understood process called Lyonization for anybody interested in looking into it. However, this only happens for females. One might then ask whether a male cat's clone would look identical. My guess is again that it would not, although Lyonization would not be an adequate explanation. However, I believe that they would look much more similar than any two cloned calico cats (which are all female and whose coats are formed by this mechanism).
and without 'genetic defects', but if she was born blind do ya think they would've named her Bcc??
Rainbow is reserved. Cc is curious and playful. Rainbow is chunky. Cc is sleek.
Hardly surprising. My translation is:
Rainbow is an old cat. Cc is a kitten. Rainbow is chunky. Cc is still growing.
Obviously they compiled the new cat as:
cc -O
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.