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Dolly the Sheep Alive Again
SpeZek writes "Dolly the sheep has been reborn. Four clones have been made by the scientist behind the original research.
The quads, which have been nicknamed 'the Dollies,' are exact genetic copies of their predecessor, who was put down seven years ago.
The latest experiments were partly carried out to check if improvements to the technique cut the risk of problems in and out of the womb.
Named after country and western singer Dolly Parton, Dolly was created from a cell taken from a mammary gland. The rest of the sample of tissue has lain in a freezer since, until it was defrosted to make the Dollies."
Pass the mint jelly :-)
It's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.
Okay, is my mind totally in the gutter, or is there a significance to the mammary gland / Dolly Parton link?
Better known as 318230.
I'm curious to know if Dolly will be the new teacup (used to test rendering algorithms) or Lenna (for image processing).
Will we be cloning the same sheep over and over again as a common reference?
Well, it's not as if they created her out of some sort of vacuum. They're just manipulating the machines that nature has already provided.
GOOD NIGHT!
Stupid journalists and movie makers keep thinking cloning something makes a true copy. These are genetic progeny; Dolly's sisters, not Dolly.
Duncan Idaho...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
This makes me wonder how many people are cloning their pets and bringing them back.
I'm not sure I could do that myself. I miss some of mine, but would it be appropriate to bring them back, or should I just get another?
Don't know. But I think about it.
There are so many that need homes right now ... I know that I miss my first Newfie and my St. Bernard, but I also know that when my current Newfie and mutt pass on, there will always be other large dogs that need a home ...
-- Barbie
Now we know the identity of the Lost Cylon.
on the up side , lamp chops will never be in short supply, now we just need to clone some tasty pigs.......think of the bacon
They've been doing this for years in Medicine. Just ask Henrietta Lacks.
From the article, the original Dolly was put down after about 6 years due to all kinds of medical conditions (infections, arthritis, etc). However, these four sheep are 3.5 years old, and are apparently in perfect health. A major argument against the use of cloned animals in animal husbandry (either cloning particularly tasty animals or using clones to breed) is that cloned animals end up in constant agony due to their origin.
Since these cloned animals appear just as comfortable and pain free as your "run of the mill" farm animal, it seems as if cloned animals can be just as humane to farm as normal animals. In fact, since the meat yield from each animal is much higher (by definition of selective cloning as the pinnacle of selective breeding), I would argue that using more cloned animals would reduce the ecological impact of the meat industry.
Ye average American Joe might not want to eat cloned meat, but clones are already breeding like mad to produce more productive offspring. Perhaps this new longitudinal study will give more insights on the ethics and health impacts of cloned meat.
Signatures are the new names.
What is the difference between getting a new pet and getting a new pet that shares your old pet's DNA?
(Aside from the high risk of the clone having genetic defects and dying young.)
How long until we see countries cloning mass eugenicized armies of the perfect race for warfare, class-control, workforce supply, and nationalistic tendencies? 50 years anybody?
Using a particular template doesn't guarantee anything beyond superficial characteristics. You have to train your warriors, though these days I suppose its in the software more than anything else. The only practical outcome from cloning I can see is growing replacement body parts. I can definitely see that happening.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
So how long until the first genetic piracy article on Slashdot?
I would think after 3 or 4 incarnations you'd not feel so guilty about putting a bullet in one after it shits on the carpet
but consider about one in ten people has the ability for extreme bodybuilding....I would think there are many physical characteristics that would make a much better than average warrior. Perhaps even some brain firmware is more suited for the training, we don't yet know.
hmmm, that argument could work for hot and willing women too, worth a try....
Dolly Idaho.
Abduhl Al-Hazred, in his Necronomicon wrote:
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."
They're just the same as twins.. and no-one likes twins, they're all evil.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Haha. I am an athiest, and you are an idiot.
Quite wrong actually. It took over a hundred attempts before Dolly was cloned successfully. The clones that were produced had significant health problems. The genes aren't entirely methylated the way they ought to be and the telomeres are markedly shorter than they should be. To clone a human being at this point would be incredibly inhumane.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
There's a gene literally one gene in particular that determines how well your body copes with extreme long running sessions.
Those with one expression of it keep on jogging while the ones with a slightly different collapse. The ones with the first gene are also better suited to prolonged exertions of force.
The geneticists who actually breathe drink and live the human genome every day know of many genes that combined properly will give you the ultimate soldier.
It doesn't stop there, you can have faster thinking scientists, people needing less sleep the posibilities are endless. It boggles the mind why we as a society are crippling our scientific pursuits, and for what? For nothing!
Now that is a Texas-size sexual fantasy!
Futurist Traditionalism
Did she mention bright lights, an unearthly presence, Or meeting my mom?
We've already seen it, over and over again.
Oh I'm sorry, you are talking about reality, not science fiction...? Yeah. 50 years. Sure. And you forgot using people as batteries.
The GOP is hoping to clone Ronald Reagan before the 2012 election, being that they are short real candidates.
Table-ized A.I.
There is no bond. Its a new individual. Its all in your head. The animal won't know or care.
One thing you can be assured of is that it will have a different personality (anamality?). You will probably be disillusioned.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Two major issues: Religion, and Star Trek.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Exactly, I don't think body building has much to do with being a good soldier in the modern era, being smart and trainable is infinity more important. There are obviously exceptions like being able to carry a large number of rounds for something like the SAW but those can be mostly be overcome with improved technology (see Bigdog robot pack mule).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
But to that argument, Gattaca was only bad for the kids who didn't go through the selection process. There wasn't anything remotely bad for the folks who had the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter genes.
Gattaca showed the disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots". It didn't go so far as to say there was any disparity between the "haves" in their own little circle. One can argue that the difference between the folks in the high end jobs and the bottom end jobs right now is exactly the same thing, except we don't actually have any control over it. It simply is a game of bingo.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Quite wrong actually. It took over a hundred attempts before Dolly was cloned successfully. The clones that were produced had significant health problems. The genes aren't entirely methylated the way they ought to be and the telomeres are markedly shorter than they should be. To clone a human being at this point would be incredibly inhumane.
Couldn't they look at merging their efforts here with these efforts where they are:
Researchers bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter causing the mice to age prematurely and suffer ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. When the mice were given injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of aging raising hope among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the aging process."
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
You can never go home again.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
...call them Dolly Sisters.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Too much of the development is dependent upon protein activation times and whole bunch of other stuff I know nothing about, for the cloned animal to be exactly like the original. For example, in the case of cats, the color is not directly determined by the DNA. The cat CC was the first cloned pet, and it did not look like its genetic donor. I imagine behavior is even more finicky, as it is affected by experiences and other such nebulous factors.
Better known as 318230.
Exactly. When my dear kitty passes on I'm sure she'll want me to give another shelter cat the same chance at a happy life that she had.
Plus, why would I disturb her from her eternal nap? Surely that's any cat's idea of heaven.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
They said only god could create life, well, then Dolly is irrefutable prove that there is no god.
Or that they were wrong about only God being able to create life.
That would solve the telomere problem but the improper methylation issue remains. This may be solved with embroyonic research
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Unless they used eggs from the same host animal as before, they are unlikely to be genetically identical since the mitochondrial DNA will be different.
The mitochondrial DNA problem is one reason why embryonic stem cells produced via cloning are still rejected by the animal in which it is implanted.
(I'm not the same AC)
I think it's presumptive to assert that clones will have a different personality. I imagine that's quite possible, especially for those who adopted pets which were already mature (thus their personality was fully formed beforehand). However, I've had several cats from birth (because we had taken in the mother), and other cats and dogs right from weaning. Those animals developed their personalities under our care, and I suspect there would be a better than even chance that their clones' personalities would at least be very similar to original. I base that on the idea that whatever part of cat (or dog) personality is determined by genetics should be identical (barring cloning errors), and that the environment in which they would develop would be quite similar.
That said, I'd probably rather just take in strays/rescues, particularly given the likely ridiculous costs of pet cloning.
- T
It's not just a horror/gore movie spoof anymore.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
About 1200 grams of useless gray matter.
They need to see how far they can push cloning, I propose they keep cloning this sheep and see how far they can take the cloning before they end up with nothing by Eldritch Abominations....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Identical twins don't have identical personalities. I doubt that cloning a body will be any more effective at cloning personality.
Still, she never calls.
What did YOU think, again?
The result was a Dolly Llama
Plus, why would I disturb her from her eternal nap? Surely that's any cat's idea of heaven.
The clone would be a different entity. Just like an identical twin is a different person from his/her twin sibling.
That's also why "Dolly the Sheep Alive Again" is wrong. Dolly the Sheep is dead. These are new clones.
One thing you can be assured of is that it will have a different personality (anamality?).
Personality is a breed/environment thing. The breed is going to be exactly the same of course, the only difference would be the environment, but if you were the previous owners of the pet then it's not likely that the environment will change much. So it's really unlikely that the new pet will have a different personality given that all other factors remained (relatively) the same.
One word: Twins.
QED.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Well obviously. Did you not catch that I was joking?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The question is: who stated that second theory? Not a scientist, I'm pretty sure.
Any reasonable people would believe neither, as none has any evidence to support itself.
Dilbert RSS feed
Bit of a war monger that one. Keep it away from Cardassians (especially Damaaaaaaaaaaaar)
Don't see the fuss myself, they all look the same to me.
It's not useless. You can tan the hide with it (turn it into leather).
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
There were more clones, but the scientist could never finish counting them - they kept falling asleep.
Rather clone asses (not: arses) next time.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I wonder if they have a hive mind - could this be the first Beowool cluster?
I call them Bitch Dollies..... Wanna meet 'em?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Well, you should, at least you'd have the same mother in law. The devil you know and all that.
Also: when?!
IIRC the procedure is still far too expensive to be used commercially on ordinary farm animals. Wait until we genetically reprogram the animals so that they can give birth to their own clones without manual intervention.
What I suspect will happen is that we'll find out that all sheep are clones of Dolly that we sent back in time sometime in the future, to the distant past before sheep existed...
I wonder if they have a hive mind - could this be the first Beowool cluster?
If the sheep have a hive mind, wouldn't it be a Bee-O-Wool cluster?
antipaucity
Yeah - the mammary gland cells weren't produced from scratch - just replicated
antipaucity
I'm reminded of an old vet friend telling us about the "$4.95 budgie cure". When some tearful kid would come in holding a stone cold bird, the vet would quietly nip out the back door to the k-mart next door and buy another bargin budgie, and give it to the overjoyed child saying "Polly's cured!" and present the knowing parents with a bill for $4.95. If the child ever noticed the feather coloration or size was a bit off, then the vet would simply say "Oh, that's just a side effect of the medication".
So now you're telling me that the cloned cat CC did not really look like its genetic donor because of "protein activation times"? The cloning process that was used didn't cost $4.95, by any chance, did it?
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was slightly grey,
It didn't have a father, just some borrowed DNA.
It sort of had a mother, though the ovum was on loan,
It was not so much a lambkin, as a little lamby clone.
And soon it had a fellow clone, and soon it had some more,
They followed her to school one day, all cramming through the door.
It made the children laugh and sing, the teachers found it droll,
There were too many lamby clones, for Mary to control.
No other could control the sheep; their programs didn't vary,
So the scientists resolved it all by simply cloning Mary.
But now they feel quite sheepish, those scientists unwary,
One problem solved! But what to do, with Mary, Mary, Mary...
-- by Anonymous (it's not mine; the writer's name is forgotten.)
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The question is: who stated that second theory? Not a scientist, I'm pretty sure.
Science says basically "we not only don't know what happened before the big bang, we can't know what happened before the big bang, and in fact nothing happened before the big bang because there is no such thing as "before the big bang" since time itself didn't exist before the big bang.
However, there's a slashdotter whose sig reads "In the beginning, there was nothing. Then it exploded."
How do you know she's not an astrophysicist?
Free Martian Whores!
It always seemed to me that this was a poor argument. Twins have so many incentives, explicitly and implicitly to differentiate themselves and not just *seem* different but *be* different. It seems the example of raising two animals/people in parallel is vastly different than doing it sequentially.
If only there was some way we could study nurture/nature in this way with something that is not human, and therefore could pass an ethics approval application at a research institution. It might give us some insight into development.
Sorry that was my clone posting.
Hmm...., let's see. Poof poof, and poof. There, god created the universe.
The "other theories" on the other hand... Big Bang -> elementary particles combine -> create hydrogen -> fusion -> higher elements -> radiation -> complex compounds -> simple life -> evolution (*gasp*) -> life as we know (and don't know) it.
If I believe in the second theory, then the floodgates open for exotic stuff, say like gravity (two rocks attract each other? Bah, it's the love of god binding them).
Whereas the elegant, simple, first item on the menu, leads me to the wonderful world where nothing is impossible, demons possess people and wizards would be zipping around on brooms if it were not for the church to ban them (sorry Harry).
Anyway, I digress. The thing is, nobody possesses the absolute knowledge of the universe. If god created then who created god? If it was the big-bang then what was before it, and what caused it (admittedly though scientists are working on it)? The good thing about the scientific side of the fence is the fact that we admit when we don't know something and somebody somewhere gets a grant to look into the matter, instead of declaring it the handiwork (noodlywork?) of the spaghetti dude.
On the cosmic scale my friend, we are all ignorant, or innocent.
A new revelation every day
Based on everything I've learned from Hollywood, all they'll have to do is splice in some frog DNA, and then: raptor-sheep.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"It's so nice to have you back where you belong. You're looking swell, Dolly, We can tell, Dolly, You're still glowin', you're still crowin' You're still goin' strong."
I don't think I've seen so many troll mods in a row before. Obviously some pissed off christians have mod points today.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Thanks for the social lesson. On a related note, people quote Sarah Palin a lot because she is funnier than, well - almost anyone with a clue. Now, allow me to return the favor: Scientist use the term mammary gland instead of breast, because not all breasts have mammary glands, and the two words, while related, are not synonymous.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'd love to see what differences there were from the original cat. Sheep are, I imagine, pretty much similar to one another anyway, but it would be interesting to see if a cloned cat had the same quirks as its original.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The breed is going to be exactly the same of course, the only difference would be the environment, but if you were the previous owners of the pet then it's not likely that the environment will change much.
They could have moved, divorced and remarried, got a kitten, had a baby, any of a number of things. A lot can happen in an environment in a year.
Free Martian Whores!
So first, there was Dolly (clone of Doly) ;-)
Now it's Dollly, DoIVy, DoVy, and DoVIy?
(Won't look quite right if your font distinguishes between l [lower case L] and I [uppercase i]).
--Udo.
- at least for people with nothing stored in their brain...
So what trauma must these golas be subjected to in order to trigger the memories of the original dolly?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Of course there is prior art on a naming convention for clones. If there are 4 clones of Dolly, they're named 2Dolly, 3Dolly, 4Dolly, and 5Dolly.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Science says basically "we not only don't know what happened before the big bang, we can't know what happened before the big bang, and in fact nothing happened before the big bang because there is no such thing as "before the big bang" since time itself didn't exist before the big bang.
Nobody talked about the big bang or what happened before it, but nice strawman. Even the Big Bang itself is just a theory - there are more.
Parent said that the theory is "that the entire universe self-created from nothingness" which has no evidence to support it, unlike other theories. So while you may conceive it, no respectable scientist would believe it to be true.
However, there's a slashdotter whose sig reads "In the beginning, there was nothing. Then it exploded."
How do you know she's not an astrophysicist?
That depends on your definition of scientist. If you think scientist is someone with a PhD in a science, then I guess she's a scientist.
I prefer Isaac Newton's: "a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method."
And anyone who believes that did not use the scientific method.
Dilbert RSS feed
Yeah, nine chances should be enough for anyone.
I consider both definitions of "scientist" to be equally valid, but it's just as likely (or more so) that she's a programmer or an engineer. Her sig is, after all, meant to be humorous.
some theories are untestable (so far). I guess rather than calling these folks scientists, you would call them mathemeticians? If so, that's an entirely valid view in my opinion.
Free Martian Whores!
I don't think I've seen so many troll mods in a row before. Obviously some pissed off christians have mod points today.
I'm a Christian, and just find ignorant people funny.
:D
My favorite, though, is definitely the evangelizing atheist
I do, however, consider it important to respect peoples religious beliefs... to an extent. Keep holy the Sabbath? Sure. Blame the rape victim? Not so much....
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I'd sure like to know!
I'm honest enough to admit I lie to myself.
Well religion's still an issue here in the states, even though the rest of the first world is more or less getting over it.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
So Dolly lives again in mammary?
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
anyone know how many years you can keep embryos in the freezer for??
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
So we call them Dolly-lam-a, Dolly-lam-b
Quite amusing how this was brought up nearby.
And it's not really clear they have many such incentives BTW... Others also treat it almost as a challenge to spot differences, which might be hardly there.
While our idea of unbroken, monolithic personality is, in large part, an illusion, a myth. We are generally much closer to our peers than to ourselves at some very different stage of life. You need to often look closer to notice anything "wrong" with split-brain patients. We also like to convince ourselves how unique we are...while not really being able to track more than a few dozens of other people, out of almost 7 billion (but we do like to believe in the myth that "more people live now than have ever lived" while in reality there's 100+ billion homo sapiens dead already)
One that hath name thou can not otter
The difference is apparently about wasting resources in the search of a reason to ignore stray/etc. pets around.
One that hath name thou can not otter
With no query string parameters, the page brings up a users' own page. A person would think that you would know that by now... *sigh*
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.