Texas researchers clone cat Researchers in Texas have cloned a cat, producing a two-month-old kitten called Cc:. The work is described in the scientific journal Nature and is the first time anyone has cloned a pet. Cc: is a copy of her genetic mother, though not of the surrogate cat which actually gave birth to her. Despite having the same genes and the same colour coat as her genetic mother, Cc: has a different coat pattern, given that these patterns are not exclusively down to genes. The Wall Street Journal says the work at Texas A&M University was financed by an 81-year-old financier called John Sperling, who wants to charge wealthy pet owners to clone their pets. He was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying that he would also like to see cloning used for socially useful animals such as rescue dogs. Previous animal cloning experiments have concentrated on livestock and laboratory animals with a view to duplicating expensively created transgenic animals. Such animals have been genetically modified to make them produce valuable drugs in their milk or to make them potentially suitable for organ transplants. Cc: is the only surviving animal of 87 kitten embryos created by cloning. The success rate is similar to that achieved with sheep, mice, cows, goats and pigs. It will have to improve if pet cloning is to become a reality. --- cute mutant kitty! --
Cc: - you know what it stands for right? Carbon copy... I think it's a great name, cute kitty too... I hope it stays normal and doesn't get arthritis like that poor sheep...
<B>Cc: - you know what it stands for right? Carbon copy... </B> Yeah ... and if they had called it (and spelled it) Carbon Copy, that would have been fine. But not "cc:"! ":"'s should never be in anyone or anything's names!
I think a colon in a cat's name is rather appropriate. All the cat lovers I've ever known have always been full of **** anyway.
If you gonna clone sh*t . .. . clone food animals then send them to Somolia or something .. .. USEFUL stuff Rocket River
Wait a minute. This happened at A&M, so you know what that means don't ya? The current Reville will never die! They'll just keep cloning it.
I agree with the Humane Society(?) here: don't clone pets. There are so many kitties out there already that need homes and never get them. Warning - oversimplified biochemistry lesson below: Dolly the sheep may have premature aging problems because her genetic material was not newly created (from a combination of the parents' DNA) but was introduced into a new cell and allowed to continue replicating. Every time DNA goes through its replication process, the tail end of the chromosome (telomere) does not get completely copied. So it gets shorter and shorter. While these end pieces do not contain any critical genes, I believe they serve to protect the rest of the DNA from mutation. This may be why people get cancer at a higher rate when they are old. If you clone a lot of animals, you could start to see the same thing. This means: we are not immortal. Our genes contain the writing on the wall. And don't expect a cat, or dog, or human to have the same personality once it's been cloned. My husband, as an identical twin, is a genetic copy of his brother, and was raised in the same environment. But they turned out quite different. There are just too many variables.
