First the bad news. It was not us. Meaning ‘us’ as in U.S. Just goes to show how much of an impact the Right is having on our quickly dwendlling status as a country that has the brain power to do anything cool anymore. You know, the crazy Christians in Conservative Land did always say we used to ride Dino to work in the dark days of the Bible… well, they were not all wrong as those diminished times of a day gone by seem to be right back in our future. Seems Scientists at Liverpool’s John Moore University have successfully pulled a ‘Dolly’. According to a spokesman yesterday, they ?have cloned a dinosaur. ‘Spot’, (not sure what’s the meaning of the name) a baby Apatosaurus hybrid is currently being incubated at the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dolly the sheep, as the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, is by far the world’s most famous clone. However, cloning has existed in nature since the dawn of life. From?asexual bacteria?to??virgin births? in aphids, clones are all around us and are fundamentally no different to other organisms. A clone has the same DNA sequence as its parent and so they are genetically identical.
Several clones had been produced in the lab before Dolly, including?frogs,?mice, and cows, which had all been cloned from the DNA from embryos. Dolly was remarkable in being the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. This was a major scientific achievement as it demonstrated that the DNA from adult cells, despite having specialised as one particular type of cell, can be used to create an entire organism.
How was this feat accomplished? Scientists for the DNA from preserved Apatosaurus fossils, which were on display at the university’s museum of natural science. Once the DNA was harvested, scientists injected it into a fertile ostrich womb.
?Ostriches share a lot of genetic traits with dinosaurs,? said Dr. Gerrard Jones, a biology professor at LJMU and the project’s leading scientist. ?Their eggshell microstructures are almost identical to those of the Apatosaurus. That’s why the cloning worked so perfectly.?
Those in the scientific community say the dinosaur cloning ? the first ever of its kind ? is a milestone for genetic engineering.
?I used to think this kind of thing could only happen in the movies,? said Dr. Gemma Sheridan, a LJMU chemistry professor. ?But we’re making it happen right here in our lab. It’s astounding.?
The cloning attracted the attention of a wide variety of animal rights activists and religious groups. They claim that animal cloning is unethical and immoral.
PETA President Craig Farmer criticized the scientists for performing potentially life threatening threats on a new species.
?These scientists brought an animal from the Jurassic age back to life ? just to watch it suffer!? he said.
But Dr. Sheridan doesn’t seem to be bothered by the activists? quibbling. She says that the opportunities afforded by dinosaur cloning are endless.
Within ten years, we could repopulate the world with dinosaurs,? she said.
As of press time, the dinosaur is in stable condition. Scientists plan to run more tests on him today.
Since Dolly
Since 1996, when Dolly was born, other sheep have been cloned from adult cells, as have?cats,?rabbits, horses and donkeys, pigs, goats and cattle. In 2004 a mouse was cloned using a nucleus from an olfactory neuron, showing that the donor nucleus can come from a tissue of the body that does not normally divide.
Improvements in the technique have meant that the cloning of animals is becoming cheaper and more reliable. This has created a market for commercial services offering to clone pets or elite breeding livestock, but still with a $100,000 price-tag.
The advances made through cloning animals have led to a potential new therapy to prevent mitochondrial diseases in humans being passed from mother to child. About 1 in 6000 people is born with faulty mitochondria, which can result in diseases like?muscular dystrophy. To prevent this, genetic material from the embryo is extracted and placed in an egg cell donated by another woman, which contains functioning mitochondria. This is the same process as used in cloning of embryonic cells of animals. Without this intervention, the faulty mitochondria are certain to pass on to the next generation.
The treatment is currently not permitted for use in humans. However, the?Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority?in the UK has reported that there is general support in the public for legalising the therapy and making it available to patients.
