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Scientists Have Re-Cloned Mice To the 25th Generation
derekmead writes "Dolly's mere existence was profound. It was also unusually short, at just six years. But scientists in Japan announced yesterday they have succeeded in cloning mice using the same technique that created Dolly with more or less perfect results: The mice are healthy, they live just as long as regular mice, and they've been flawlessly cloned and recloned from the same source to the 25th generation. Researchers claim it's the first example of seamless, repeat cloning using the Dolly method—known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT)—in which the nucleus from an adult source animal is transferred to an egg with its nucleus removed. Until recently, the process was fraught with failures and mutations. But the team led by Teruhiko Wakayama, whose results were published today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, was able to create 581 clones from the same original mouse. Scientists, including Dolly's creator, have long felt the process was still too unstable—and too wasteful of precious eggs, given the failure rate—to be used on humans any time soon. But perhaps it's not so far off, after all."
The only thing greater than me, would be to have 12 clones of me. Hopefully they also have a compact clone model, so I can call him "mini-me."
sudo make me a sandwich
I know this is sorta trollish, I just thought it was interesting too
There's no copyright for DNA. Someone could take a skin-swab from you, and clone you, without your permission. If they did, would you feel your rights had been violated?
Now to get it working in humans.
Well the Japs have always been very good at copying electronic tech. With Bio-tech, cloning is the new copying
Just what the planet needs.
But from the Wikipedia entry the summary itself links to:
A post-mortem examination showed she had a form of lung cancer called Jaagsiekte,[15] which is a fairly common disease of sheep and is caused by the retrovirus JSRV.[16] Roslin scientists stated that they did not think there was a connection with Dolly being a clone, and that other sheep in the same flock had died of the same disease.[14] Such lung diseases are a particular danger for sheep kept indoors, and Dolly had to sleep inside for security reasons.
Call me evil, but I'm less interested in full blown cloning than I am creating a sack of meat and replacement organs.
Lose a kidney? I fear no rejection for I am fear incarnate! Also because cloned organs.
I'd been hoping for a live action Clone Wars on Ice.
I'm a satanic clam.
Large numbers of defective fetuses is what keeps human cloning from being a reality. Cloning also has the issue global warming has, the name is misleading. Instead of clone they should be called a genetic twin. Most assume the clone will look like you and have all the same characteristics. I'm sure some even think they'd have the same memories. A clone can be taller or shorter and It may look almost exactly the same but even identical twin have slight differences so family and friends can pick them out. The only hope of human cloning having a future is to get away from this carbon copy idea and explain to people how they will be unique and not a perfect copy.
What's with telomeres? That's all I have. And I expect this comment to disappear underneath a delugh of "Let's clone Natalie Portman" posts, but seriously, is this thing on? What's with telomeres and DNA end funtions and all this other shit we've been reading about here and all l the rest of the sites? Why is this viable and how does it relate to us?
Human eggs are precious. They cost $157,000,000,000,000 (that's Trillion, with a Tee) an ounce!
The problem with human cloning is women produce too few eggs - just one a month. There's one thing that isn't cloned from the original cell: mitochondria. The clone gets them from the egg, not from the original donor. So, why not use rabbit eggs? After a few cell divisions, all proteins would have been replaced by human proteins anyway. All but those in the mitochondria. I wonder what would happen to the organism? We can try it first with monkeys and rabbits to see whether it works or not. I had this idea soon after dolly, but felt I should keep my mouth shut. It seems the Chinese tried something like that some years later, but I don't know the results. Anyone here knows?
Dolly had to sleep inside for security reasons.
Why? Were they afraid she was going to steal things from the other sheep? Was there a history of anti-social behavior in her family history (as shown here)?
That is all.
So, just like diamonds, that's artificial scarcity at full work here.
According to Wikipedia, a woman has something around 300.000 egg cells when she turns fertile. Let us assume 50.000 cells as the average for all women between 16 and 40. So how many human females do we have in that age range?
According to the US census [1], there were ~4.5 billion (short scale) humans on this planet between 16 and 64. To subtract the oldest 24 years, let us be pessimistic and assume an equal distribution; so we need to subtract one half (16 to 64 = 48 years; 16 to 40 = 24 years). We also subtract one half of that, as we only want women.
Therefore, we have roughly 1.125 billion human females of fertile and (in many countries) legal age.
So, (1.125 x 10^9) * (5 x 10^4) = 5.625 x 10^14 egg cells. 10^12 is a trillion (short scale); so we have somewhere around 562.5 trillion human egg cells on this planet earth.
According to [2] a single human egg cells weighs between 0.00177-0.0042 mg. Average of 0.001mg. That means the total mass of all human egg cells is: ~0.5 trillion milligrams. Since milli = 1/1000, that makes 0.5 billion grams. Since 1kg = 1000g, we have 0.5 million kg of human egg cells. That means a bit over half a megaton of human egg cells at this moment.
According to Google, that's 17 636 981 ounces of human egg cells.
Plus, if even 1 out of every 50.000 cloning attempts works (assuming you're only producing female clones), it's self-replenishing. :p
[1] - http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1353_age_distribution_by_country.html
[1] - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Weight_of_a_human_egg_cell
Moon mining and huge advances in cloning announced on the same day.... Maybe Duncan Jones was onto something?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't think they meant security from people or the other sheep, but predatory dogs. Kind of ironic that trying to protect her probably killed her.
...of how telomeres work during cloning.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/288/5466/586.summary
Science 28 April 2000:
Vol. 288 no. 5466 pp. 586-587
DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5466.586
News of the Week
CELL BIOLOGY
In Contrast to Dolly, Cloning Resets Telomere Clock in Cattle
Gretchen Vogel
When researchers took a close look at the cells of Dolly, the cloned sheep, they found that her telomeres, the caps on the ends of the chromosomes, were shorter than normal. Because telomere length decreases with age, this was an indication that Dolly might age unusually quickly. But on page 665, a physician and his colleagues report that cells from calves that they cloned have telomeres that are longer than normal. According to the researchers, the findings suggest that tissues produced by cloning might last at least as long as the original cells--and perhaps longer.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...how my parents feel is another.
Genetically my clone is their son. Do *they* have any rights or obligations towards him?
I bet they did mean security from people. Plenty of anti-GMO folks out there who would have stolen (or just killed) the animal if they were given the chance. No, Dolly was not an example of GMO. Yes, people are that stupid.
Apparently Dolly just didn't like staying outdoors. It's called argylaphobia.
"I think so, Brain. But how do you ever fit the cheeses of the world inside the handles of this mechanic's screwdriver's set?" "NARF! (x581)"
that's where Mary went; Dolly was sure to go
what a silly misconception you have. a clone is merely a sibling, like a twin. a clone has no memories whatsoever of the donor
Thanks for the interesting post, but I believe the average you indicated underestimates your final results by about a factor of three:
[A] single human egg cells weighs between 0.00177-0.0042 mg. Average of 0.001mg.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
HOW DO EGG YOLKS BECOME CHICKENS? (Internet Article) When you divide a cake, the parts are smaller than the original cake and the cake never gets bigger. When we were a single cell and that cell divided, the new cells were the same size as the original cell and we got bigger. New material had to come from somewhere. That new material came from food. The sequence in our DNA directed our mother's food, we received in the womb, to become new cells forming all the tissues and organs of our body. Read my Internet article: HOW DO EGG YOLKS BECOME CHICKENS? Just google the title to access the article. Babu G. Ranganathan (B.A. Bible/Biology) Author of the popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS
Onward, to cloning neanderthal women.
Mice, unlike our favorite animals - humans, dogs, cats, and horses, have active telomerase. That means that repeatedly cloning them is no great challenge.
Social Credit would solve everything...