3 August 2010 08:45pm
Meat from the offspring of a cloned cow entered the food chain last year and was eaten, the Food Standards Agency has revealed.
And experts have admitted they do not know how many embryos from cloned animals have been imported into Britain.
FSA chief executive Tim Smith stressed that there were no health risks associated with eating meat or drinking milk from the descendants of cloned cows.
Two bulls born in the UK from embryos harvested from a cloned cow have been slaughtered, one of which "will have been eaten" while the other was stopped from entering the food chain.
The revelation came amid an FSA probe into whether any matter from cows born of a clone have been used in food production.
Under European law, foodstuffs, including milk, produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and gain authorisation before they are marketed. But the FSA said it had neither made any authorisations nor been asked to do so.
An investigation was launched in the wake of claims that a British farmer had admitted using milk in his daily production without labelling it as from the offspring of a cloned cow.The FSA said on Tuesday that it had traced a single animal, Dundee Paradise, believed to be part of a dairy herd, but could not confirm that its milk had entered the food chain.
Mr Smith told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There's a live investigation going on at the moment and, whilst we have got a first-class cattle tracing scheme, what we don't know is precisely how many embryos have been imported into the country."
He said such a situation was "inevitable", adding: "It's a bit like the police being there and us expecting no crime. However good the system is, it relies on the honesty of those people participating.
"It's impossible for us to stand by each animal and watch it through each phase of its life cycle."
http://latestnews.virginmedia.com/news/uk/2010/08/03/cloned_cow_offspring_in_food_chain
Showing posts with label clones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clones. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Question of the weekend: Should we clone Neanderthals?
Sat Mar 06 10, 3:01PM
The current issue of Archaeology magazine has a fascinating article revealing that scientists are very close to sequencing the DNA of a Neanderthal woman who died in what is now Croatia 30,000 years ago. And then:
We’re already cloning sheep, dogs, and other higher mammals with great success. As far as technical difficulty goes, human cloning cannot possibly be much more difficult -- on a genetic level, are humans more complicated than dogs? (I wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if human cloning had already been achieved secretly.) And I have no doubt that as soon as we can clone extinct animals, we will. And I’m not alone in that:
http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2010/03/030610question_of_the_weekend_should.html
(Submitted by Caty Bergman)
The current issue of Archaeology magazine has a fascinating article revealing that scientists are very close to sequencing the DNA of a Neanderthal woman who died in what is now Croatia 30,000 years ago. And then:
The ability to use the genes of extinct hominins is going to force the field of paleoanthropology into some unfamiliar ethical territory. There are still technical obstacles, but soon it could be possible to use that long-extinct genome to safely create a healthy, living Neanderthal clone. Should it be done?The article goes on to explore some of the ethical, moral, and legal aspects of both sides of the question. I find it all utterly riveting. The science geek side of me wants to scream, “Yes! Let’s do it!” But the emotional side of me wonders what life would be like for such a person, who would be more alone than any of us homo sapiens could possibly imagine. The science geek side of me knows that even cloning an individual would not bring back into existence Neanderthal culture, which is well and truly dead to us forever (unless we can invent a time machine, of course). But the emotional side of me wonders what new perspectives on, you know, life, the universe, and everything a different intelligence might have to share with us.
We’re already cloning sheep, dogs, and other higher mammals with great success. As far as technical difficulty goes, human cloning cannot possibly be much more difficult -- on a genetic level, are humans more complicated than dogs? (I wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if human cloning had already been achieved secretly.) And I have no doubt that as soon as we can clone extinct animals, we will. And I’m not alone in that:
[John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin] believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. "We are going to bring back the mammoth...the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away." He doesn't think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. "In the end," Hawks says, "we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I'm just sure of it."What do you think? Should we clone Neanderthals?
http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2010/03/030610question_of_the_weekend_should.html
(Submitted by Caty Bergman)
Monday, February 22, 2010
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Clones of 9/11 hero dog unveiled in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Five clones of a search and rescue dog which helped locate people trapped in the rubble of the 9/11 attacks were formally presented to their ancestor's former handler.
James Symington, a former Canadian police officer, choked back tears as he formally took possession of the five descendants of his beloved German shepherd named Trakr, who died in April.
Symington was presented with Trakr's offspring after winning a competition organized by California firm BioArts International -- the "Golden Clone Giveaway" -- to find the world's most "cloneworthy" dog.
Symington said he hopes the puppies -- Trust, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu -- will go on to follow in Trakr's footsteps.
"We're here to celebrate that Trakr's legacy lives on in these five beautiful puppies," he told reporters. "If they have the same attributes Trakr did, then hopefully they'll develop into world class search and rescue dogs."
Symington and Trakr arrived at the site of the World Trade Center collapse, commonly referred to as Ground Zero, on September 12, 2001 and were one of the first K9 search and rescue teams on the scene.
After working nearly non-stop for 48 hours, Trakr located the last human survivor found in the rubble of the twin towers.
"Trakr was an extraordinary search and rescue dog. His work at Ground Zero was the culmination of his career," Symington said.
BioArts International, which says it offers the world's first commercial dog cloning service, partnered with South Korea's SooAm Biotech Research Foundation to clone Trakr under the direction of scientist Hwang Woo-Suk.
BioArts International chief executive Lou Hawthorne said canine cloning would remain beyond the reach of ordinary pet lovers, with cloned dogs costing an average 144,000 dollars each.
Hawthorne defended the right of people to clone their dogs instead of obtaining new pets from rescue shelters.
"I think 99 percent of the time people should get their pets from shelters," he told AFP.
"But can we agree though that one percent of the time if you have a one in a million dog and you have the money to pay for it, you should be able to go to either a breeder or a cloner?"
Symington said that one member of his new litter -- Trust -- was an exact replica of Trakr.
"The physical similarities are uncanny," he told AFP. "He's the spitting image of the Trakr that I first met in 1995. He has exactly the same markings, the way he moves, everything. Very alert, very intelligent and intuitive.
"I respect that cloning's not for everyone. But there are few dogs that are born with extraordinary abilities and Trakr was one of those dogs," he said.
"I look forward to the day that these puppies can follow in Trakr's footsteps and play an important role in other rescues, like Trakr did."
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Texas-sized tract of single-celled clones
Biologists find world-record colony of amoebae in Houston cow pasture
HOUSTON -- (March 11, 2009) -- A Rice University study of microbes from a Houston-area cow pasture has confirmed once again that everything is bigger in Texas, even the single-celled stuff. The tests revealed the first-ever report of a large, natural colony of amoebae clones -- a Texas-sized expanse measuring at least 12 meters across.
The research is available online and featured on cover of the March issue of Molecular Ecology.
This is the Houston pasture where the amoeba colony was found.
Credit: O. Gilbert/Rice University
Some large organisms like aspen trees and sea anemones are well-known for growing in large clonal colonies. For example, one colony of aspen clones in Utah contains more than 40,000 trees that share a massive root system.
In contrast, the short-lived patch of amoeba clones contained millions of genetically identical individuals of the species Dictyostelium discoideum. Though they typically live as loners, hunting and eating bacteria, D. discoideum are known to cooperate when food gets scarce and even to sacrifice their lives altruistically. Biologists say the discovery of the clonal colony could yield important clues about the evolution of such cooperative behavior.
"This discovery is important for our understanding of microbial social evolution because the processes of selection, cooperation and competition play out differently when populations are geographically mixed as opposed to being isolated in patches," said study co-author Joan Strassmann, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in Natural Sciences and chair of Rice's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Studies of clonal colonies in other species show that the colonies often appear at the edge of a species' natural range.
D. discoideum cooperate to form stalks topped with "fruiting bodies."
Credit: O. Gilbert/Rice University
"People had seen this in studies of sea anemone and other species," said study co-author Owen Gilbert, a Rice graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology. "There are thought to be two ways that these colonies can form at the edge of a species' natural range: either just one clone finds its way there, or perhaps a few make it there but they compete with each other and just one wins out."
Based on these studies, Strassmann, Gilbert and co-author and evolutionary biologist David Queller, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, surmised that clonal patches could form on the edge of a microbial species' range, and they looked for a suitable location to test the idea in D. discoideum.
"D. discoideum tends to thrive at higher altitudes and in densely wooded areas where the soil stays moist," Gilbert said. "A Texas cattle pasture is simply the wrong type of habitat. But D. discoideum thrives on the dung of various animals, which suggests that given a good amount of rain, a cattle pasture could be the perfect place for a population explosion."
Strassmann, Gilbert and a team of Rice undergraduate researchers took samples from 18 local pastures. In each, they plotted a grid and collected soil and dung samples. Back at the lab, they put the samples on clear plates and examined them daily to see whether they produced any feeding amoebae. When amoebae were found, they were analyzed genetically to see whether they were the same species, and if so, whether they were genetic clones.
In one of the fields, they found that all the D. discoideum samples were genetic clones. Subsequent tests in the lab showed that the strain didn't have a distinct competitive advantage over three other strains found in nearby pastures. Exactly how and why the large clonal patch appeared in that particular field isn't clear, but the fact that it was there raises some intriguing questions.
For example, Strassmann and Queller's prior work with D. discoideum has turned up more than 100 genes that help the organism regulate its cooperative behavior. They also know that mutations to these genes can allow individual amoebae to "cheat" and take advantage of nonmutants' willingness to sacrifice themselves. How species like D. discoideum manage to keep cheaters from out-producing and eliminating cooperative strains is one focus of their work.
"The existence of clonal patches in microbial species presents very interesting possibilities for the appearance and regulation of cheating behaviors," Queller said. "It is likely that additional natural studies of social microbes will continue to complement the genetic and evolutionary laboratory studies of these organisms."
###
The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, a Wray-Todd Graduate Fellowship and a Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Scholarship.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/ru-tto031109.php
HOUSTON -- (March 11, 2009) -- A Rice University study of microbes from a Houston-area cow pasture has confirmed once again that everything is bigger in Texas, even the single-celled stuff. The tests revealed the first-ever report of a large, natural colony of amoebae clones -- a Texas-sized expanse measuring at least 12 meters across.
The research is available online and featured on cover of the March issue of Molecular Ecology.
Credit: O. Gilbert/Rice University
Some large organisms like aspen trees and sea anemones are well-known for growing in large clonal colonies. For example, one colony of aspen clones in Utah contains more than 40,000 trees that share a massive root system.
In contrast, the short-lived patch of amoeba clones contained millions of genetically identical individuals of the species Dictyostelium discoideum. Though they typically live as loners, hunting and eating bacteria, D. discoideum are known to cooperate when food gets scarce and even to sacrifice their lives altruistically. Biologists say the discovery of the clonal colony could yield important clues about the evolution of such cooperative behavior.
"This discovery is important for our understanding of microbial social evolution because the processes of selection, cooperation and competition play out differently when populations are geographically mixed as opposed to being isolated in patches," said study co-author Joan Strassmann, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in Natural Sciences and chair of Rice's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Studies of clonal colonies in other species show that the colonies often appear at the edge of a species' natural range.
Credit: O. Gilbert/Rice University
"People had seen this in studies of sea anemone and other species," said study co-author Owen Gilbert, a Rice graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology. "There are thought to be two ways that these colonies can form at the edge of a species' natural range: either just one clone finds its way there, or perhaps a few make it there but they compete with each other and just one wins out."
Based on these studies, Strassmann, Gilbert and co-author and evolutionary biologist David Queller, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, surmised that clonal patches could form on the edge of a microbial species' range, and they looked for a suitable location to test the idea in D. discoideum.
"D. discoideum tends to thrive at higher altitudes and in densely wooded areas where the soil stays moist," Gilbert said. "A Texas cattle pasture is simply the wrong type of habitat. But D. discoideum thrives on the dung of various animals, which suggests that given a good amount of rain, a cattle pasture could be the perfect place for a population explosion."
Strassmann, Gilbert and a team of Rice undergraduate researchers took samples from 18 local pastures. In each, they plotted a grid and collected soil and dung samples. Back at the lab, they put the samples on clear plates and examined them daily to see whether they produced any feeding amoebae. When amoebae were found, they were analyzed genetically to see whether they were the same species, and if so, whether they were genetic clones.
In one of the fields, they found that all the D. discoideum samples were genetic clones. Subsequent tests in the lab showed that the strain didn't have a distinct competitive advantage over three other strains found in nearby pastures. Exactly how and why the large clonal patch appeared in that particular field isn't clear, but the fact that it was there raises some intriguing questions.
For example, Strassmann and Queller's prior work with D. discoideum has turned up more than 100 genes that help the organism regulate its cooperative behavior. They also know that mutations to these genes can allow individual amoebae to "cheat" and take advantage of nonmutants' willingness to sacrifice themselves. How species like D. discoideum manage to keep cheaters from out-producing and eliminating cooperative strains is one focus of their work.
"The existence of clonal patches in microbial species presents very interesting possibilities for the appearance and regulation of cheating behaviors," Queller said. "It is likely that additional natural studies of social microbes will continue to complement the genetic and evolutionary laboratory studies of these organisms."
###
The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, a Wray-Todd Graduate Fellowship and a Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Scholarship.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/ru-tto031109.php
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
India clones world's first buffalo
Kounteya Sinha
14 February 2009
The Times of India, (c) 2009 The Times of India Group
NEW DELHI: Samrupa, the world's first cloned buffalo calf, was to be India's answer to Dolly the sheep. But unlike Dolly, the first mammal cloned 13 years ago, who lived for seven years, Samrupa succumbed to a lung infection on Wednesday night, five days after it was born.
Now, scientists at Karnal's National Dairy Research Institute, who in a major breakthrough on February 6 created Samrupa, say the next cloned buffalo offspring is expected in May.
Samrupa's one-year-old surrogate mother belonged to the Murrah breed, Haryana's pride and the world's best-known milking buffalo, capable of producing 35 kg of milk a day.
Speaking to TOI from Karnal, scientist Dr S K Singla, who was part of the six-member team that created Samrupa, said, "We have been working on developing the calf for the past four years. However, we could not save her."
Dr Singla added, "We are, however, happy that we gave birth to a cloned buffalo using an indigenous cloning mechanism. The next birth is expected in May and another in June."
The breakthrough has put India among a select few countries capable of cloning mammals.
Scientists from NDRI's Animal Biotechnology Centre developed a landmark technique - Hand-guided Cloning Technique - which the scientists said was much simpler and an advanced modification of the conventional cloning technique which was used to create Dolly.
"This new technique is less demanding in terms of equipment, time and skill. We didn't need sophisticated tools like micromanipulators but conducted the surgery with a simple hand blade," Dr Singla said.
In this technique, the oocytes (female eggs involved in reproduction) isolated from abattoir ovaries were matured in-vitro (outside the womb and in a lab), was treated with enzymes to clear its outer coating and then isolated with the help of a handheld fine blade.
Then, somatic cells from the ear of a donor buffalo was electro fused with the oocytes, grown in the laboratory for a week and the resultant embryos were transferred to recipient buffaloes for the production of the calf of desired gender.
"One of the biggest advantages of this technique is that the calf of desired sex can be obtained. If we take cells from the ear of a female buffalo, the offspring will be a female. Each somatic cell isolated is capable of creating one new life. The surrogate mother gave birth to Samrupa in two months time," Dr Singla said.
Congratulating the team, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) director general Mangala Rai said the new technology would help immensely in increasing milk production, thanks to faster multiplication of superior cell quality.
NDRI director A K Srivastava said, "In India, we have the largest population of buffaloes in the world. However, the percentage of elite animals is very low." Dr Singla added, "Without cloning, one buffalo would have given birth to a single offspring every year. Through cloning, we can get surrogate mothers to give birth to 40-50 calves every year."
Of the total production of milk of India, about 53% comes from buffaloes, 43% from cows and 4% from goats and sheep.
The team, which also included Dr R S Manik, Dr M S Chauhan, Dr P Palta, Dr R A Shah and Dr A George, is now planning to publish the breakthrough in scientific journals.
Scientists say cloning may become a viable tool for preserving endangered species. While India has been trying to recreate the cheetah, in January, scientists from Spain announced the cloning of the Pyrenean Ibex, a wild mountain goat which was declared extinct in 2000.
Using DNA from skin samples kept in liquid nitrogen, scientists managed to clone the ibex from domestic goat egg-cells. The newborn ibex died shortly after birth, also due to physical defects in its lungs.
14 February 2009
The Times of India, (c) 2009 The Times of India Group
NEW DELHI: Samrupa, the world's first cloned buffalo calf, was to be India's answer to Dolly the sheep. But unlike Dolly, the first mammal cloned 13 years ago, who lived for seven years, Samrupa succumbed to a lung infection on Wednesday night, five days after it was born.
Now, scientists at Karnal's National Dairy Research Institute, who in a major breakthrough on February 6 created Samrupa, say the next cloned buffalo offspring is expected in May.
Samrupa's one-year-old surrogate mother belonged to the Murrah breed, Haryana's pride and the world's best-known milking buffalo, capable of producing 35 kg of milk a day.
Speaking to TOI from Karnal, scientist Dr S K Singla, who was part of the six-member team that created Samrupa, said, "We have been working on developing the calf for the past four years. However, we could not save her."
Dr Singla added, "We are, however, happy that we gave birth to a cloned buffalo using an indigenous cloning mechanism. The next birth is expected in May and another in June."
The breakthrough has put India among a select few countries capable of cloning mammals.
Scientists from NDRI's Animal Biotechnology Centre developed a landmark technique - Hand-guided Cloning Technique - which the scientists said was much simpler and an advanced modification of the conventional cloning technique which was used to create Dolly.
"This new technique is less demanding in terms of equipment, time and skill. We didn't need sophisticated tools like micromanipulators but conducted the surgery with a simple hand blade," Dr Singla said.
In this technique, the oocytes (female eggs involved in reproduction) isolated from abattoir ovaries were matured in-vitro (outside the womb and in a lab), was treated with enzymes to clear its outer coating and then isolated with the help of a handheld fine blade.
Then, somatic cells from the ear of a donor buffalo was electro fused with the oocytes, grown in the laboratory for a week and the resultant embryos were transferred to recipient buffaloes for the production of the calf of desired gender.
"One of the biggest advantages of this technique is that the calf of desired sex can be obtained. If we take cells from the ear of a female buffalo, the offspring will be a female. Each somatic cell isolated is capable of creating one new life. The surrogate mother gave birth to Samrupa in two months time," Dr Singla said.
Congratulating the team, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) director general Mangala Rai said the new technology would help immensely in increasing milk production, thanks to faster multiplication of superior cell quality.
NDRI director A K Srivastava said, "In India, we have the largest population of buffaloes in the world. However, the percentage of elite animals is very low." Dr Singla added, "Without cloning, one buffalo would have given birth to a single offspring every year. Through cloning, we can get surrogate mothers to give birth to 40-50 calves every year."
Of the total production of milk of India, about 53% comes from buffaloes, 43% from cows and 4% from goats and sheep.
The team, which also included Dr R S Manik, Dr M S Chauhan, Dr P Palta, Dr R A Shah and Dr A George, is now planning to publish the breakthrough in scientific journals.
Scientists say cloning may become a viable tool for preserving endangered species. While India has been trying to recreate the cheetah, in January, scientists from Spain announced the cloning of the Pyrenean Ibex, a wild mountain goat which was declared extinct in 2000.
Using DNA from skin samples kept in liquid nitrogen, scientists managed to clone the ibex from domestic goat egg-cells. The newborn ibex died shortly after birth, also due to physical defects in its lungs.
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