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Goodbye, Dolly
goombah99 writes "Dolly, the famous cloned sheep has been put to death after being diagnosed with a progressive lung disease, according to many reports. This follows on earlier reports that she was prematurely aging, including developing arthritis. While one should be cautious about drawing conclusions from a single data point, its interesting to speculate." Here is a link to her birthplace courtesy of Captain Large Face
Hello Lamb Chops !!!
This is the best thing about cloning. An endless supply of lamb chops !!!
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
"While one should be cautious about drawing conclusions from a single data point, its interesting to speculate."
It's obviously a sign from above...
There is nothing sadder for a parent than having to burry their clone....
Somehow that just did not sound right.
This follows on earlier reports that she was prematurely aging, including developing arthritis.
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy-- um, I mean Dolly.
I write in my journal
"We had to put her to sleep," they said sheepishly. "She was in shear agony. There was mutton we could do about it."
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Although the shortening of her telomeres is well-publicized, it very well may have had nothing to do with the death. A somewhat more detailed story can be found here [Reuters].
The main suspected "kink" are the telomeres, and if we do discover it's a kink, it may be a difficult one to work around. Here's a good article on telomeres and telomerase.
They don't know how many sheep they've actually cloned, you know. They tried counting the sheep, but they fell asleep...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yes, but if the rumors of premature aging are true, they may actually have some science to base their argument on. You see there's this very important substance called telomeres attached to the end of chromosomes. As cells divide, the telomere caps become shorter, and eventually the cells stop dividing and either malfunction or die. It stands to reason that, if you start off with an adult cell, you already have shortened telomeres and will therefore have a reduced lifespan. [Any biology experts should feel free to correct me.]
Rather than terminate Dolly, I'd rather they have experimented with telomerase to see if they could rejuvinate her. Although, I guess that's a little on the unethical and cruel side.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Its more important than that, that fact clones aren't medically identical or as fit as the
orignal, tells us, that there is something we
don't know about genetics. Whatever it is, it
can cause premature aging and auto-immune disease,
that may well mean, that whatever we learn about
why clone are unfit, can produce cure for auto-immune diseases and maybe slow down aging.
Perphap the key to clones failure is methylization, the genes in cells can be selectly
switched on and off by attacting methyl group
to potions of the DNA, how this works, is controlled, and how/if its passed on, is very
important unknown of cell biology. In the same
way over half the DNA is a cell, is made up of
intron sequence that don't code for proteins or gene, however intron a preversed across millions
of years of evolution, human share many of the
same introns as mice. That means introns have to
be doing something important, but unknown. We've
much yet to learn about cellular biology and cloning as much to teach us.
If mature animals have "old" DNA, how do their offspring get "young" DNA?
I think of DNA aging as a process of random decay over time, but somehow my old DNA and my wife's old DNA can produce a baby with young DNA.
Does the combination of DNA during sexual reproduction clean up the strands from the parents? Or is something going on in their gonads to clean up their old DNA before packing it into gametes?
There's a biological process here that I haven't heard anyone describe, or even identify. And yes, I want to patent it.
Baa, baa, baa!
TRANSLATION:
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Lab rats examined by laboratory technicians. I watched hay pour into my trough like a golden rain of food. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. Oh, and uh, it's painful to live in fear, isn't it?
I'm the stranger...posting to
No. They are going to have mint jelly with this.
Your telomere explanation was pretty good, except that telomeres aren't just any substance. They're DNA. The end of a chromosome has short repeating sequences of a few base pairs (ex: AATTAATT, etc.) which are not all replicated when a cell duplicates its genome and divides. This presumably acts as a molecular "clock" for the organism to keep track of its "age," but this is pretty controversial and unsubstantiated.
Click here to read more about telomeres. (Why don't more people link to Wiki?)
Even if this telomere function were well-established, it doesn't entirely explain the aging process. It seems that part of the process is due to oxidative damage caused by radical reactions in the mitochondria. But similar reactions happen in chloroplasts and some plants live for millenia!The exciting thing about biology is that you reach the frontiers of knowledge in the field during your first year of introductory undergraduate coursework. In math you reach the frontiers maybe by your fourth year or in grad school. For physics and chemistry, somewhere in between. Biology is full of unexplained phenomena. If you want to make a great fundamental discovery in one of the hard sciences, then become a biologist. So much is unknown!
There is good reason those zealots will have a ball with this. Shortly after Dolly was born lots of individuals familiar with the science had already predicted she'd suffer from advanced and premature aging. This has been the primary reason why the scientific community has wanted to forestall human cloning, since even when we get the successful clones they'll have decades hacked off their lives and be prone to numerous diseases seen primarily in geriatrics.
I fully support the use of cloning, both human and animal for whatever reasons, but only when we can first correct this very severe problem that exists in the process. The zealots, however, will use this legitimate ammo to get laws passed in a few years that will take decades, if not longer, to overturn. Thats why I oppose any mandatory bans on cloning research.
Ahh, Scotland - where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Telomeres are repeating sequences of non-protein-coding DNA at the end of a chromosome. Due to an inefficiency involoved in the replication of chromosomes, they become shorter and shorter with each cell division. Eventually, the telomere is depleted and parts of actual genes begin to be cut off. This explains death by old age.
An interesting side note is that cancer cells do not undergo the shortening of telemeres unlike normal cells. As opposed to normal cells which have a finite lifetime, cancer cells are functionally immortal.
A little off topic, but still somewhat interesting.