Dolly the Sheep’s Fellow Clones

...Enjoying Their Golden Years

   

The four clones created from the same cell line as Dolly the Sheep. Scientists found that they aged as normally as sheep that were not cloned. Credit University of Nottingham

Dolly the Sheep started her life in a test tube in 1996 and died just six years later. When she was only a year old, there was evidence that she might have been physically older. At five, she was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. And at six, a CT scan revealed tumors growing in her lungs, likely the result of an incurable infectious disease. Rather than let Dolly suffer, the vets put her to rest.

Poor Dolly never stood a chance. Or did she?

Meet Daisy, Diana, Debbie and Denise. “They’re old ladies. They’re very healthy for their age,” said Kevin Sinclair, a developmental biologist who, with his colleagues at the University of Nottingham in Britain, has answered a longstanding question about whether cloned animals like Dolly age prematurely... (continues)

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Why Clone Sheep?

 

...So why clone boring sheep in the first place? Twenty years ago, the goal wasn’t to create a copy of a super cool animal (although people do want to clone endangered ones). The goal was to create transgenic animals — those with foreign genes inserted into their genomes — that could be used to make stem cells or proteins to treat diseases. The original sheep cloners were working with a company that hoped to extract a human protein from sheep milk that would treat diabetes.

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‘Bring Back the King,’ a Gung-Ho Guide to Resurrecting Species-

A book by the cell biologist and journalist Helen Pilcher cheerfully explores advances in cloning that could be used to revive departed species.