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'Sister Clones' Of Dolly The Sheep Have Aged Like Any Other Sheep, Study Says (npr.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the genetically-modified-organisms dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: About four years ago, Kevin Sinclair inherited an army of clones. "Daisy, Debbie, Denise and Diana," says Sinclair, a developmental biologist at the University of Nottingham in England. "'Sister clones' probably best describes them," Sinclair says. "They actually come from the exactly the same batch of cells that Dolly came from." In an article out Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, Sinclair and his colleagues write that the ewes' age, along with their strapping health, might be a reason for people to start feeling more optimistic about what cloning can do. Dolly's life did not turn out as scientists in the cloning field hoped it would. She died young -- 6 1/2 -- with a nasty lung virus. "That was really just bad luck," Sinclair says, and had "nothing to do" with the fact that Dolly was a clone. It was a daunting concept for those in the cloning field, because, says Sinclair, "If you're going to create these animals, they should be normal in every respect. They should be just as healthy as any other animal that's conceived naturally. If that is not the case, then it raises serious ethical and welfare concerns about creating these animals in the first place." But, the good health of the 13 clones in the Nottingham herd suggest better prospects for the procedure. Sinclair and his colleagues evaluated the animals' blood pressure, metabolism, heart function, muscles and joints, looking for signs of premature aging. They even fattened them up (since obesity is a risk factor for metabolic problems including diabetes) and gave them the standard tests to gauge how their bodies would handle glucose and insulin. The results? Normal, normal, normal. "There is nothing to suggest that these animals were anything other than perfectly normal," says Sinclair. They had slight signs of arthritis (Debbie in particular), but not enough to cause problems. "If I put them in with a bunch of other sheep, you would never be able to identify them," he says.

66 comments

  1. What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They still haven't explained the premature aging of Dolly, and that is concerning. Besides, what's the purpose of cloning? They're not producing an exact replica, not even close.

    1. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      What premature aging? Dolly died of a cancer caused by a particular virus, a disease that is relatively common in sheep. Extensive efforts to look for signs of premature aging found nothing (although that didn't stop some superficial media coverage from speculating otherwise).

      As far as why, with livestock at least, farmers want to make copies of productive animals, where genetics is a huge factor. At the moment, an animal that wins the genetic lottery (although a lot of effort goes into picking parents to make this easier) ends up becoming a very expensive breeder, and animals used for actual production are one or two generations separated. Cloning could potentially cut out the extra generations and be cheaper.

    2. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's to cover up the fact that they have already populated the world with sheeple.

    3. Re:What have they shown? by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 1

      Yes, but there is nothing better than a live sheep to convince people than clones do *not* age prematurely. The previous evidence was indirect.

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

    4. Re:What have they shown? by djinn6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Cheaper, yes, but there's a bit of risk. Genetically identical animals are all susceptible to the same diseases and environmental conditions. A virus that would have wiped out 5% of the herd before could now wipe out the entire herd, because the entire herd is equally susceptible to it. Combine this with globalization and the entire world could be suddenly out of sheep.

      This has actually happened before with the "Gros Michel" banana cultivar that was all but wiped out by the Panama disease. The modern cultivar, Cavendish, has the same risks and will likely become unviable in the future due to disease. Hopefully we'll have another cultivar lined up by then.

    5. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How was the evidence indirect? Dolly died at six years old when sheep on average live 12 years, so media speculated that Dolly was born six years old in some way. That is not how animals work considering Dolly died of a common disease and live an otherwise normal life (even with offspring), as there is no guarantee that they will all live to their typical life span. There was no evidence that Dolly was six years old in some way at birth, or 12 years old in some way at death, after specifically checking in many ways, which is pretty direct.

    6. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Farmers aren't all looking for the exact same animal, which is in part why there are so many different breeds of livestock. At the very least you have multiple use animals like sheep, where some are better for wool and others are better for meat, but there are also differences for different environments. Also, breeding will continue in an effort to improve upon animals we already have (there are groups even now that preserve old, uncommon breeds of livestock for such purposes in addition to just preservation sake). It is not practical or realistic to expect the entire globe to end up with the same clone, and even with massive commercialization genetic susceptibility to disease is more likely to be a regional problem. You would have more global problem if it turns out some specific gene useful across breeds causes a susceptibility to a disease and it got in breed or spliced into the genome of many different breeds, but that is not a cloning specific problem and it still wouldn't be as bad as the banana problem.

      The problem with bananas, is that if you want bananas without seeds in them, you need to propagate by cutting. This is a very cheap, easy method of cloning that is actually easier than breeding and necessary as part of growing what people think of as a banana. The local farm in the middle of nowhere that avoids large agricultural companies for whatever reason will use the same cloning process for bananas as the giant globalized companies.

    7. Re:What have they shown? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Farmers aren't all looking for the exact same animal, which is in part why there are so many different breeds of livestock.

      True and not true. There may be many different breeds of livestock, but for many of them huge numbers of them are fertilized with semen from a single source. If it has an undetected congenital defect, there is a high risk that it will be passed on to its descendants. And when it gets cheaper to raise cloned animals, then farmers absolutely will be looking to clone the very best individuals and raise them, just as we do with plants today. In the interim, they will be seeking to clone the best breeders, to secure a supply of high-quality semen.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:What have they shown? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      This is a real concern, as opposed to bullshit "ethical" concerns which are just there for the group circle-jerk.

      We live in a world where people define right-and-wrong separate from a group of procedural rules that tell them when to ignore those right-and-wrong things and declare non-wrong things inappropriate while doing non-right things because it would be unethical to not commit some atrocity.

      Ethics are why we don't abort a non-sentient blastocyst with no brain, instead demanding it develop into a heavily-neglected child of an abusive welfare family that tried to do the right thing by avoiding creating an animal that would just grow up to be a tormented drug criminal raised in an addiction household.

      Ethics are why we don't experiment with *cells* because they happen to be *human* cells, even though such experimentation could save lives and end real suffering (caveat: embryonic stem cell research is, thus far, patently useless and has little potential to cure anything; adult stem cell research has provided a great deal of medical advances).

      Are they seriously preparing an argument against cheap food and the alleviation of poverty because it would be unethical to create an animal that, were it not SLAUGHTERED FOR FOOD, might not live a full life? Meat chickens are slaughtered after what, 42 days? Cornish hens after some 21 or 26 or something. The damn things live for 6 years; who cares if the clones are only capable of living for a year and a half? They'll be rolled in the eleven herbs and spices long before then!

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    9. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dolly died of disease at age 6-7, and these sheep are age 7-9... so this is more along the lines of just more of the same type of evidence as before.

    10. Re:What have they shown? by Immerman · · Score: 2

      Correction - that's not how *normal* animals work.

      However, aging is still very poorly understood, and there appears to be significant components on both the systemic (organs, organism) level, and cellular levels. There was some legitimate concern that a clone would start life with the cellular age of its "parent", potentially resulting in the cells reaching "old age" long before the systems did, which would likely result in a very different kind of old age, with things like cell's self-replication systems beginning to fail despite the organs themselves initially being otherwise in good health.

      In that regard they're still not *entirely* certain it's not an issue, though it's looking good. The current sheep seem fine, and are in the 7-9 year age range (out of a normal 12-year lifespan), so it seems likely that either the cloning technique used did in fact successfully reset the cellular age (at least mostly), or that cellular aging is a minor factor in the aging of sheep.

      An interesting follow-up experiment would be cloning the clones, perhaps for several generations, to looks for cumulative problems. Another might be to intentionally NOT reset the cellular aging mechanisms (that we know of) to better understand the contributions of cellular aging to the overall effect. Though that may have already been done in preliminary experiments - I know few of the details of this tale.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    11. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True and not true. There may be many different breeds of livestock, but for many of them huge numbers of them are fertilized with semen from a single source.

      How does that contradict what the previous post said? Even though large numbers of animals may be fertilized by a single source, it is still a different source for different breeds, and there are many sources within a given wide spread breed.

      And when it gets cheaper to raise cloned animals, then farmers absolutely will be looking to clone the very best individuals and raise them, just as we do with plants today.

      Even if you gave out clones for free of a particular animal, there would be farmers paying for different animals. There is no single best animal for all farms, because, as already said, animals get used for different products and need to survive in different environments. A major screw up with one breed is going to affect farms in a similar environment with similar production, hence be more of a regional concern than global. This is a rather different picture from bananas where there is a single clone used across a large majority of commercial farms (and limited inherently to similar environments), and even different from many other plants where crossbreeding is rather difficult compared to livestock breeding.

    12. Re:What have they shown? by Immerman · · Score: 1

      True. I worry though that it opens the door to creating genetic monocultures in livestock such as we see in agriculture - such monocultures do indeed increase short-term productivity, but at the expense of becoming far more vulnerable to disease.

      It also potentially drastically reduces the long-term potential of the gene-line by eliminating most of the genetic variance that provides fertile ground for new beneficial mutations to emerge. Though as we take our first faltering steps into actually understanding DNA we can at least hope to eventually be able to engineer in new genetic features faster and more effectively than the mutation lottery could hope to accomplish.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    13. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      farmers want to make copies of productive animals, where genetics is a huge factor

      But, think of the bananas?

    14. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, there were a lot of questions before hand about how cloned animals would age and some are still unanswered. However, thinking that Dolly dying of an infectious disease at age six meant she was born six years old is the part that is not how animals work, cloned or otherwise. Many aging concerns expressed in a lot of news stories at the time, and then repeated later by those that only read that far into it, had little correlation to actual aging concerns of researchers.

    15. Re:What have they shown? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      At the very least you have multiple use animals like sheep, where some are better for wool and others are better for meat, but there are also differences for different environments.

      Another thing, look you, boyo - when it comes down to it, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn'it?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    16. Re:What have they shown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean rape and then kill.

  2. Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    See what happens when the copy of the copy of the copy copies itself. That was always the actual question.

    If they weren't viable clones for even the first generation, something VERY BIG would be going wrong.

  3. Just one problem though by MrKaos · · Score: 1

    They taste like chicken, otherwise they are perfectly normal.

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  4. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by MrKaos · · Score: 1

    See what happens when the copy of the copy of the copy copies itself. That was always the actual question.

    So to be or not to be be be be be be?

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  5. Re:Slashdot sock puppet clones do not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's truth is why. Anyone knows it. Can't have you see actual real truth. They won't let you see actual truth. Only what they want you to. It's what moderation systems are for ones that don't divulge who did the moderating like slashdot's is. Everyone knows the parent poster here is right on how forums work and why https://science.slashdot.org/c...

  6. Re:Slashdot sock puppet clones do not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because you keep replying to yourself. I moderated you --Asshole

  7. Re: Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They were already a copy of a copy of a copy.
    Unless you think the lab created sheep in the first place. If that's the case, nobody can help you.

  8. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Kkloe · · Score: 1

    what would be the point of doing a copy of a copy etc?, the point is always having the original and using its dna, you can always make more stem cells of the original and keep that batch alive, if you fail to do that then it seems you will not have any business in cloning?

  9. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    See what happens when the copy of the copy of the copy copies itself. That was always the actual question.

    Cloning is done extensively in beef production, and the answer is that it tastes the same.

  10. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    what would be the point of doing a copy of a copy etc?, the point is always having the original and using its dna, you can always make more stem cells of the original and keep that batch alive, if you fail to do that then it seems you will not have any business in cloning?

    Because much of the market is cloned stud service, with clones of famous studs.

  11. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are such things as imperfections in any process, including cell division.

  12. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So to be or not to be be be be be be?

    To be-e-e-e-e or not to be-e-e-e-e-e...

  13. Just in time for the sheeple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well this is sure good news considering the upcoming presidential election in the US (and other elections).

    Not that ethics and politics ever had much to do with each other, but they sure like to pretend so.

  14. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by bmimatt · · Score: 1

    Cloning is done extensively in beef production, and the answer is that it tastes the same.

    Citation needed

  15. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The point is every time you do a new copy you have to pay IP to the copyright holder.

    So obviously it is very important for them to propagate the clones as much as possible - and then send in the lawyers, and cash in the $$$.

    Other than for that reason cloning is totally useless - that is why Nature gave us sexual reproduction, which allows genes to be mixed and modified at every generation...

  16. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by MrKaos · · Score: 1

    Two sheep or not two sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  17. A Flock of Hitlers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Onwards to clone a flock of Hitlers to be sent to community centers in Israel so that they can express they discontent and displeasure. After the trauma is dealt with, Middle East peace will be imminent.

  18. I should have realized by MrKaos · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is ewegenics!

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    1. Re:I should have realized by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Genius! I would give you a +10000 if I could, but I used my points to downmod the racists.

    2. Re:I should have realized by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      This is ewegenics!

      You sir, have won Slashdot for the entire month. Bravo!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    3. Re:I should have realized by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You definitely win.

  19. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not cloning. They use embryo transfer to get dozens of calves from one cow each year. But those are all siblings, not clones.

  20. I'm a clone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm a clone, and there's nothing wrong with me. Well, other than my lack of a soul, that kinda sucks.

  21. FTFY by imatter · · Score: 2

    "sestra clones"

  22. it's supposed to be about the telomerase by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 1

    Wow. Looking over the comments on this article, there's apparently something about advanced applied microbiology techniques that really reminds some people how much they hate how other cultures prepare their food slightly differently, wear slightly different clothes, use a different set of arbitrary sounds to communicate their ideas, and have skin that reflects more or less sunlight.

  23. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Citation needed

    Citation.

    You're welcome!

  24. Re: FUCK MILLENNIAL SNOWFLAKES by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow, the antiamerican trolls are REALLY getting desperate. This comment section is a mess.

  25. Great news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now can somebody please start working on cloning Tatiana Maslany for real?

  26. Re:Slashdot sock puppet clones do not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Take a step back, then take another two steps back. Then take five or ten more steps back. Good, now you've almost gone back far enough to the point where you totally lost your mind. Literal sheep.

    On a side note this article does not allay my concerns over my chronic lung virus and abnormally high levels of arthritis.

  27. Re:Of course they have. Carry on for 50+ generatio by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    If you used a website called slashdot, you'd be more up-to-date on the cloned beef industry.

    https://slashdot.org/story/06/...

    CowboyNeal knew what nerds what to read about.