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Chinese Scientists Clone Second Goat
Chinese scientists have cloned a second goat from adult goat body cells, following the death of the world's first cloned goat 36 hours after its birth.
The scientists, at the Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology, in Xi'an -- the provincial capital of Shaanxi Province, also performed the operation which produced the first cloned goat on June 16.
The second goat, named "Yangyang", is 33.5-cm long and 29.5-cm tall, and weighs 2.6 kg. It is the sister of "Yuanyuan", the first cloned goat, died from respiratory failure stemming from undeveloped lungs, according to the university.
In cloning the goats, the Chinese scientists adopted a technique of nuclear transfer which is different from that used to produce Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned animal, born in 1997 in Scotland.
From December 1999 to January this year, scientists removed some cells from the ears of an adult goat and collected some goat oocytes 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 in the surrogate mother goat.
Yangyang and Yuanyuan, both female, were cloned from cells of the same goat, which made them resemble each other. Researchers will soon carry out a genetic analysis of Yangyang.
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