China says it has cloned two goats using Dolly the Sheep technique
China has claimed to have cloned two Tibetan goats using the same technique used to create Dolly the Sheep.
A video from the state-owned news channel China Central Television said the first goat weighed 7.4 pounds, but there was no mention of the second goat, and it’s unclear if the findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The goats were cloned from massive, prize-winning male goats who weighed around 900 pounds and were considered to be ‘excellent individuals’.
The goal was to ‘restore and persevere’ their genetic material, enhance the breeding industry, increase farmers’ income and make the most of genetic resources.
The goat clones were reportedly created by somatic cell cloning which involves transferring the nucleus of an adult cell into a new egg cell. The egg is then transplanted into a surrogate mother, who later gives birth to a baby she has no genetic match to, but has 100% of the donor’s.
For the goats, the somatic cell DNA came from three ‘excellent breeding rams,’ and the egg came from a single ewe. The scientists said that out of 43 surrogate goats, the initial pregnancy rate was 58.1%.
After 120 days, 37.2% of the surrogate mothers were still pregnant, and for goats, gestation is around 145-155 days.
‘Through cloning, the genetic information can be completely copied,’ said lead researcher Dr Su Jianmin with Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University.
‘With making full use of excellent breeding rams, as well as fully utilizing and expanding their genetic resources, we provide our scientific and technological strength to increase the income of local farmers and develop the local breeding industry.’
The pair were born in Qinghai, a province of northwest China that borders Tibet, and the team intends to clone the male goats for the best wool.
The most famous example of somatic cloning is Dolly the Sleep, who was born in 1996, and named after Dolly Parton.
She was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult mammary cell which had all the genetic material needed to produce a new sheep.
Dolly was derived from an egg cell from a Scottish Blackface sheep and the mammary gland of a Finn Dorset sheep and was implanted into her surrogate after six days of development in a lab.
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