Nottingham DolliesTHE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAMWhen Dolly the sheep became the world’s first cloned animal, some researchers raised concerns that animals conceived using this technique would suffer health problems as they aged. But new research suggests that animals cloned using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) age normally. Researchers from the University of Nottingham, U.K, and their colleagues measured the metabolic, cardiac, and musculoskeletal health of 17 cloned sheep aged 7 to 9 years old (including four from the same cell line that gave rise to Dolly), finding that the cloned animals showed no signs of disease related to the SCNT process, they reported today (July 26) in Nature Communications.
The finding “is important . . . because Dolly was under the magnifying glass for a very long time,” Dietrich Egli, a developmental cell biologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist. “This study now looks at several cloned animals and finds there is not really a difference between cloned and non-cloned animals.”
Nevertheless, “the cloning process itself is still associated with significant risks,” Egli added. Many clones never make it to term, and those that do often struggle to survive after birth. This study shows “those that do make it are fairly normal,” he said.
In 1996, Sir Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell, and colleagues at the University of Scotland’s Roslin Institute created Dolly by SCNT—transferring the nucleus of ...
