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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."

6 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Hard to believe by Sparticus789 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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."

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    1. Re:Hard to believe by shemyazaz · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm certain that most slashdotters will have no problem "turning them off".

    2. Re:Hard to believe by Sparticus789 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Most slashdotters have been waiting 20+ years for a hot girl to be interested in us, what's another 20?

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      sudo make me a sandwich
    3. Re:Hard to believe by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

      A statement emblematic of so many issues, but I'll choose to respond with snark:

      What makes you think a clone would ever go out with you?

      Hasn't bad sci-fi taught you anything? Despite being genetically identical to humans, because they are, clones mysteriously exhibit a creepy lack of free will and/or near-identical personality to the original(despite a developmental history that includes no life experience other than 'grow to apparent age of ~20 years with alarming speed in tube full of medical fluid'), perfect for producing armies of robo-hitlers or servile sex kitten harems!

      It's probably because they only get allocated one soul per genome or something, couldn't make any less sense than the answers usually provided....

  2. Copyright by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  3. Summary seems to imply Dolly's cloning was flawed by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.