Thank you, Coldfire.
Carnivorousplant, it’s been known for some time that the DNA Dolly had was already “set” at 6 years when she was born. That is, they tested her DNA and found that it matched that of the mother/donor at the time Dolly was implanted into the host/mother, rather than have the characteristics of a newborn’s DNA.
Ceyjan, they’ve known for several years, at least. Dolly was born in 1997 and I’ve been hearing about the “pre-aged” problem for about four years. Four years? I think four years. And that was from regular news channels, not developmental biology or genetics.
Iampunha, this is already theoretically possible to do in a lab and occurs frequently enough in nature. They’re called twins. Cloning can be done from cells taken early in the development of the embryo. (This does not cause the embryo any injury nor does it interfere with normal development.) Or you can keep the cells undifferentiated until the child needs a new kidney, then expose some of cells to the correct hormones and enzymes and grow the kid a new one. These are the stem cells everyone is arguing about.
Tuckerfan, there is an enzyme known as telomerase that add the telomere onto the chromosome at each cell division. However, the somatic tissues (cells of the body) of mammals don’t have telomerase, which is one proposed explanation for cellular aging. (After a certain number of telomeric shortenings, the cell can no longer divide.)
Generally, the only mammalian cells to express telomerase are the germ cells (Go, go, Gadget Gametes!) and… cancer cells. There have been experiments where somatic cells had telomerase expression induced and the cells continued to divide hundreds of times more than normal and showed no signs of aging. That is, they acted just like cancer cells. It’s possible that telomere shortening acts primarily to protect us from cancers, not tick off the moments of our lives.
Me too! In fact, I was positive that I’d already heard that she’d died twice!! Then again, she was a clone.
Is cloned meat as delicious as regular meat?
Shouldn’t someone have double-posted by now?
What a strange coincidence - Matilda, Australia’s first cloned Merino sheep has also died very recently (unexpectantly and of unknown causes).
NPR reported that Dolly was euthanized because she’d caught the same incurable respratory infection as other sheep in the lab and that the illness wasn’t age related. She’s supposed to be stuffed and mounted at the Scottish Museum of Natural History, IIRC.
[Insert joke about a Scot “Stuffing” and “Mounting” a sheep here]
What NPR failed to mention was that the root cause of Dolly’s respiratory infection was her three pack a day chain-smoking habit. Dolly was in a lot of stress after her fame started to dwindle and she turned to booze and drugs to try to mask her inner pain. Last fall she was briefly hospitalized after a heavy bout of aerosol inhalants. This was clearly a cry for help but unfortunately the researchers were so intent at keeping all this out of the news that they didn’t get her the counseling she so desperately needed. This was a tragic death that could have been avoided if we had just taken the time to reach out to her. We’re all to blame and society is to blame for this senseless loss.
Aren’t we, with the premature old age thing, generalizing from a really small sample size? Shouldn’t we do more cloning and see if those clones age prematurely before we say that it’s the cloning that did it?
Dolly is definitely not dead. I saw her at the local mall today near the petting zoo. She was wearing sunglasses, looked a little older than I remember, and had her wool dyed black, but there was no mistaking it was her. That walk. Those lips. The cheekbones. Dolly Lives!!! I seen her!!!
Lots of animals have been cloned now, and almost all of them die or show abnormalities. The cause is under intense scrutiny.
BTW, I just noticed (sorry if this is horribly unobservant of me) that the title of this thread can be sung to a certain tune from The Wizard of Oz.
Well, “Timothy Leary” from the Beatles for that matter…
Or Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.