Dolly biography

What they dream about the cloned sheep?

July 5, 1996
February 14, 2003
On July 5, 1996, for the first time in human history, it was possible to clone an artificial living beings starting exclusively from his own cells, although in the past similar procedures, although "spurious" had already been made with success, especially with amphibians, mice and cattle. The result of this experiment is passed to the Chronicle with the name of Dolly, a Finn Dorset breed sheep "simple" which is the "exact copy" of another specimen. This means that the genetic heritage of the two animals are absolutely identical. The news of his birth came in from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh where a research team, led by Ian Wilmut, was in charge of the cloning of farm animals. To date, however, cloning is a practice that has many aspects still unclear. Cloned animals, for example, are typically suffering from obesity and GIGANTISM, suffer from cardiac and respiratory problems and have serious problems with immune deficiencies.
The same Dolly went into a series of genetic degenerations which have dimmed, at least in part, enthusiastic proclamations that scientists had spread to its appearance. That's why Ian Wilmut, the "father" of the cloned sheep, was quick to declare that despite the contracted arthritis at a young age, "it is still too early to draw any conclusions from the case Dolly. However it is important for the biotechnology companies and public research laboratories is to exchange information about the health of cloned animals, to see if there are possible threats ". Retracing the steps that have led to a result that, whatever you like to judge, it is quite extraordinary, one must go back to the "far" 1994, when there was the first hunting success to the mother cell of all cells, can generate any type of tissue and organ: the Peschle group identified the gene Kdr, that controls the epidermal growth factor receptor of blood vessel walls.
Later, many other animals have been cloned but always starting from the embryonic cells. In the past, for example, had already been cloned a rat while in Japan, to take another example, from a cow were played eight identical calves. Or, the researcher Cesare Galli had announced that it had cloned Bull Galileo in Cremona. The particularity of Dolly and why it has caused rivers of ink and describing future scenarios of all kinds, is that it is a "pure" clone replica of an individual adult, without the elements of variability typical of previous experiments. Embryonic cells, in fact, contain genes male and female in a mixture that does not leave a priori predict what will be the characteristics of the clone. From this series of impressive scientific achievements stand but also a chorus of voices concerned about a possible ethical degeneration of the practice of cloning, partly because in many quarters has evoked the specter of applying this technique "unnatural" to humans. For example, it is rumored that in the far East, to remote and secret laboratories, something has already happened.
For the moment, they're just rumors or, more likely, as usual, someone studied alarmism doom. In any case, it is from these justified fears that takes shape the order of then-Health Minister Rosy Bindi that puts a stop to the practice of cloning, in fact imposing. In fact, until that time in Italy there was about a real Wild West. We see, therefore, specifically how does the technique of cloning. An egg, retrieved from the mother, and sperm from the father, are used to produce a fertilized egg. Once the embryo has divided into eight cells, this is divided into four identical embryos, each of which consists of only two cells. The four embryos are implanted in the womb of an adult female for gestation.
The technique essentially allows you to reprogram the nucleus of an adult cell and start it from scratch, allowing the ovum in which is entered, to develop a fetus and then an adult animal. Basically, in the nucleus of every cell of the adult animal Dna is cloned Dolly, while in the other cell organelles, such as mitochondria, there is the Dna of the female who provided the egg. But, that is the question, the body which was created would lead somehow memory of adult cell nucleus from which developed and then be born already old or meet unforeseen genetic degenerations. On February 14, 2003 at age six, veterinarians have injected a lethal serum after finding out that he suffered from a degenerative lung disease. Harry Griffin, the Institute's Director, confirming the news of the death of Dolly added that lung diseases are common in older sheep.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.