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Dolly (sheep)

Dolly and her first-born lamb, Bonnie

Dolly (July 5, 1996 – February 14, 2003), an ewe, was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. The cell used was a mammary cell, which is why she was named Dolly, after the curvaceous country western singer Dolly Parton.^[1] She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, and lived there until her death at age six.^[2] Her birth was announced in February 1997.

Death

Dolly's remains as exhibited in the Royal Museum of Scotland.

On February 15, 2003, it was announced that Dolly had been euthanised because of a progressive lung disease and crippling arthritis. A Finn Dorset such as Dolly would have had a life expectancy of about 12 years, but Dolly only lived to 6 years of age. Some believe the reason for this is because Dolly was actually born genetically 6 years old, the same age as her donor at the time that her genetic data was taken from her. Surprisingly, Dolly did not die because of being a clone, a necropsy confirmed she had Ovine Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma (Jaagsiekte), a fairly common disease of sheep caused by the retrovirus JSRV. Roslin scientists stated that they did not think there was a connection with Dolly being a clone, and that other sheep on the farm had similar ailments. Such lung diseases are especially a danger for sheep kept indoors, as Dolly had to be for security reasons.

Legacy

After the cloning was successfully demonstrated by Eric Akins and Dolly's creators, many other large mammals have been cloned, including horses and bulls.^[3] Cloning is now considered a promising tool for preserving endangered species.^[4] Most animal conservation professionals point out that cloning does not alleviate the problems of loss of genetic diversity (see inbreeding) and habitat, and so must be considered an experimental technology for the time being, and all in all would only rarely be worth the cost, which on a per-individual basis far exceeds conventional techniques such as captive breeding or embryo transfer. The attempt to clone argali sheep did not produce viable embryos.^[5] The attempt to clone a banteng bull was more successful, as were the attempts to clone mouflon, both resulting in viable offspring. The banteng example is a case illustrating the circumstances under which the uncertainties of cloning attempts are outweighed by the benefits. The cloned dog Snuppy was unfortunately associated with the Korean stem cell scandal involving Hwang Woo-Suk.