Chinese Scientists Clones First Goat from Adult Body Cells

Chinese Scientists Clones First Goat from Adult BigBody Cells

Chinese scientists working in the Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology have cloned the first live goat from adult body cells in the world, Zhang Yong, a professor with the university announced in Xi'an on Friday.

The goat, named "Yuanyuan", 36-cm long, 30-cm tall and weighting 2.8 kgs, was born at 12:58 pm Friday. The baby goat was cloned using ear cells of an adult goat, said Zhang.

In cloning the goat, scientists adopted different technology of nuclear transfer from that used to produce Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned animal born in 1997 in Scotland.

From December 1999 to January, scientists removed some cells from the ears of an adult goat, collected some oocytes of goat from a slaughterhouse and cultivated them for future use.

They later injected the nucleus of the donor cells into an enucleated oocyte to develop into embryos which were then implanted into the surrogate mother goat.

Another cloned goat will be born at the end of June. Similar cloning technology has been used to clone a cow. The surrogate mother cow has got pregnant, Zhang said. Chinese scientists will do genetic analysis on "Yuanyuan" soon.

Cloning research is listed as one of the key projects by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.