Many still remember the first cloned mammal, Dolly the Sheep. What they may not know is that Dolly died abnormally young. This sent shockwaves through the scientific community and has brought up an interesting challenge which will need to be conquered before significant progress can be made in this field. How can we prevent the issue of rapid aging in clones?

Now, scientists have cloned the world’s first cloned dog in order to study these “re-clones” to determine whether they die sooner and age quicker than their non-cloned counterparts.

The scientific method requires making a hypothesis, a method of testing it and after testing it repeatedly if you are fortunate you may have the honor of having your hypothesis upgraded to a theory by your scientific community (after they repeat your same experiments testing your method for flaws).

It certainly seems like 're-cloning' would exacerbate and exponentially increase the rapid aging problem in cloning.

“Scientifically, this is very exciting,” study author CheMyong J. Ko from the University of Illinois, told Gizmodo. Ko pointed out that he’s not the one cloning the dogs but offers consulting advice for the team in South Korea.

I'm sure animal rights experts aren't thrilled about this current study and may even see it as cruel and inhumane but certainly genetecists are looking forward to the research produced in this study as it could be extremely valuable in their own projects.

The specifics of dog reproduction make them particularly difficult animals to clone. It wasn’t until 2005 that scientists at Seoul National University announced they’d cloned a dog named Tai to create “Snuppy.” Snuppy died shortly after his tenth birthday—two years younger than Tai, and around two years younger than the average healthy Afghan Hound.

The fact that Snuppy lived to be 10 seems quite promising for cloning applications because for a dog it can still be considered an extremely long life! Of course considering the average healthy Afghan Hound lives to be 12 leaves something left to be desired.

Snuppy’s lifespan wasn’t markedly short, but you still might remember Dolly, the first cloned sheep, who did die abnormally quickly. Many assumed Dolly’s death had something to do with her clone identity. New research has demonstrated that probably wasn’t the case. But others are still wondering if being a clone has an impact on lifespan. So the South Korean team cloned Snuppy to create the re-clones.

The lead scientist, Ko said that their study would compare the immune systems, genetics, and behaviors between re-cloned animals and non-clones.

“Clinical and molecular follow-up of these reclones over their lives will provide us with a unique opportunity to study the health and longevity of cloned animals compared with their cell donors,” according to the recent paper published by Scientific Reports.

Techblogger Wrap Up

What are the ramifications of cloning a clone? In my opinion cloning in general represents a sort of fringe science which leaves questions of ethics and morality behind in the persuit of basic human curiousity. In a world of clones what room is left for nature to determine our path?

Source:

Here's Why Scientists Cloned the First Cloned Dog - Gizmodo