by Tamara Traubman
Scientists from the state of Texas in the United States succeeded in cloning a cat. In doing so, according to some experts, they took the first step to reproduce pets on an industrial scale.
The cloned kitten is called "Cc" which stands for "Copy Carbon". She is a tri-color cat born about two months ago. "Sissy is developing normally for a cat her age, and appears to be full of life and health," said the leader of the clan team, Dr. Mark Westosin of Texas A&M University, in an official announcement. The project was funded by an American company called "Savong and Clone Genetic" which today offers dog and cat owners to preserve DNA samples of the animals, in order to clone them in the future.
In a report to be published soon in the scientific journal Nature, the researchers describe how they created Sissy, and say that out of 87 cloned embryos implanted in the wombs of cats, only Sissy survived. Sissy is a genetic copy of a two-year-old cat named Rainbow. According to Westosin, the colors on her fur are not the same as those of her genetic mother, Rainbow, because this characteristic is determined not only by genes, but also by embryonic development.
The success of Sisi's clone raised ethical questions. Experts said that the company is selling pet owners false hope, because cloning an animal with the same genetic load will not be able to reproduce an animal with a similar personality. Some animal rights activists opposed the cloning of Sisi, saying that the cloning does not serve any social purpose and even threatens to worsen the problem of the population explosion of the cats.
How many cats do you need to dissect to clone one pet?
18/02/2002
The first pet clone, Sissy the cat, raises some questions
hard To arrive at one live embryo, about a hundred embryos were implanted and analyzed
Few cats. Sissy's fur is quite different from that of her genetic twin
Rainbow because genetics is not everything in life
by Tamara Traubman
Scientists from Texas have cloned a cat. Some experts see this as a first step towards cloning pets in commercial quantities. The tribes called the cat "Cc" the initials of "carbon copy" (copy, in English). "Sissy is about two months old today, she looks completely healthy and is developing normally, relative to a puppy of her age," said the head of the cloning team Dr. Mark Vastosin, a cloning expert from Texas A&M University in a statement published by his group.
So far, scientists have only cloned experimental animals, such as mice, or farm animals - sheep, cows, goats and pigs. The funding for Sissy's cloning came from the American company "Savings & Clone Genetic" which hopes to offer "cloning services" to cat and dog owners. 3.7 million dollars are invested in the project.
The study will be published at the end of the month in the scientific journal "Nature", but the editors of the journal went ahead and published it on their website already on Thursday, after the existence of the cat was discovered.
Sissy is a genetic copy of Rainbow, a tri-color cat ordered from a company that sells experimental animals. During the cloning, Dr. Vastosin and his colleagues inserted a cell from Rainbow's body into the egg of another cat, from which the genetic material had been removed. An electrical signal caused the genes from Rainbow's donor cell and egg to come together and start dividing as a normal embryo. After a few days in which the embryo was grown in the laboratory, as in vitro embryos are grown, the researchers implanted it in the uterus of a surrogate cat. The fetus continued to develop in the womb and the researchers delivered Sissy by caesarean section.
Although Vestosin has proven through genetic testing that Sissy is a genetic copy of Rainbow, the two are not identical in the outer Maran. The distribution of the colored spots on their white fur is similar, but the pattern of colors within the spots is different. Prof. Hermona Sorek, a molecular biologist from the Hebrew University, says that the fur colors in cats are determined during embryonic development, in a process that is only partially predetermined by the genetic load. "This is an excellent demonstration that cloning can only guarantee genetic duplication, but we are much more than what is written in our DNA letters," said Prof. Sorek.
The "Genetic Savings & Clone" company is the result of a project
"Misciplicity". The project was initiated in 1998 by John Sperling, a billionaire from Arizona, who gave $3.7 million to Texas A&M University so that the biologists there would devote their efforts and expertise to recreating his beloved dog, Missy.
In their whimsical nature, which is of no real value, the Missiplicity project and Sisi's cloning are unique projects in the field of cloning. Over the weekend, some skeptics asked why invest millions of dollars in cloning a pet when the world is full of sick children and abandoned dogs.
The organization for the protection of animals "" of the United States Humane Society published a statement last Thursday opposing the cloning of pets and stating that "this cloning does not serve any social purpose and threatens to add to the problem of the population explosion of cats and dogs".
However, in another sense, Sisi's clone represents the normalization of the idea of cloning, in a short time. In 1997, when Edinburgh scientists revealed the existence of Dolly the cloned sheep, the idea of mammalian cloning (which seemed likely to lead to human cloning) was seen by many as a nightmare harbinger of science out of control. Cloning was still seen at the time as a fanciful vision belonging to the realm of science fiction. Leon Kass, a philosopher of morality, warned against the effect of cloning on the course of human life and turning reproduction into a mechanical process, and wrote "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to penetrate."
Who was sneaky at the weekend? Today, when scientists discover that they have succeeded in cloning another pig or another cow, the story is not published on the front pages. When the Discovery Channel funded the thawing of a mammoth for the purpose of collecting cells from its corpse and cloning it, Dr. Larry Egenbrod, a paleontologist involved in the project, said with joy: "When people ask 'why clone a mammoth', I say 'why not'". His arrogance was so convincing, it made the skeptics look like a bunch of complainers unwilling to move with the times. Dr. Michael Archer, a scientist working on cloning the extinct Tasmanian tiger, dismissed the opposition's position by saying that the objections to the work are theological. "But the opponents should step aside", he added, "this is the way science works".
In presenting the cloned animals, the scientists emphasize the endearing aspects of the cloned creatures. The scientists from Traxxas described how "the lively and playful Sissy plays with other cats". They also posted video footage of her chasing a green pom pom. Scientists from the UK-based PPL company described at the press conference how a cloned piglet cheerfully bit its twin brother's ear. Not all clones are like that. Scientists hope to clone goats and cows that will produce medicine in their milk, and organs from cloned pigs may one day save the lives of people in need of organ transplants.
Sissy is the first example of sentimental cloning, the first attempt to create a specific animal, feeding the illusion that those we love can be replaced with their genetic copies. It doesn't matter that the project's supporters admit that cloning can only replicate an animal's genetic makeup, not its personality. They elaborate on the fantasy of the resurrection. The company's CEO, Lou Hawthorne, told The Associated Press that he had been inundated with calls from people whose pets were "dying or hit by a car or just getting old." Prof. George Seidel, a cloning expert from Colorado State University, told "Haaretz" a few months ago that he regularly receives phone calls from grieving parents begging him to clone and bring their loved ones back to life.
Veterinarian Dr. Andre Mensah raises the question of how ethical it is to breed pets. Despite the fact that some cloned animals appear completely normal, he says, others die in infancy due to serious medical problems, such as lung and heart defects, and sometimes health problems are discovered even years after birth.
Dr. Menashe added that cat lovers should know that in order to create one cloned cat, Dr. Vastosin and his colleagues extracted hundreds of eggs. They implanted 87 embryos into the uterus of surrogate cats. Except for Sissy, all the fetuses were aborted or died while still in the womb, and the researchers had to dissect the cats to remove the dead fetuses.
Hawthorne said the company "expects to launch commercial cat cloning services on a limited basis later this year." Initially the clone will cost $200, and after three years they hope to lower the price to $20. Already today, the company offers to store pet tissues in liquid nitrogen tanks. The price of storage is $895, and it costs almost twice as much if it is a sick animal or an animal that died a short time ago. Annual holding fees of one hundred dollars are added to this amount.
"Despite their hopes, these people will not be able to get their pets back," says Prof. Sorek. Her cat, Fassie, was recently run over after being in her family for about ten years. "I have no interest in cloning him," she says. "The clone will only give me back a cat with the same genetic load, it will not restore the character, the identity, of Fassie."
Photo: IP
Dr. Mark Vastosin and her colleague hold the cloned cat Sissy. A whimsical project with no real value
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