In a Nature news feature, reporter Ewen Callaway looks back at Dolly the sheep's legacy, 20 years after her birth with a series of reminiscences of those who were there.
Karen Walker, embryologist, PPL Therapeutics: On the day we made Dolly, we had such a rubbish day.
Bill Ritchie, embryologist, Roslin Institute: It was 8 February 1996. I looked it up. We do know it was a rubbish day: we had various problems with infections and things.
Walker: It's a shame the building has been demolished, otherwise you could see the room in which Dolly was made. I use the word 'room' loosely, because it really was just a big cupboard, which, when Bill and I were in there, you could just get two chairs and the incubator in.
Ritchie: It literally was the cupboard. It was the storage cupboard at the end of the lab. When we got camera crews in later, they couldn't believe it, there was no room to shoot.
Walker and Ritchie were part of a project at the Roslin Institute and spin-off PPL Therapeutics, aiming to make precise genetic changes to farm animals. The scientific team, led by Roslin embryologist Ian Wilmut, reasoned that the best way to make these changes would be to tweak the genome of a cell in culture and then transfer the nucleus to a new cell.
The article contains reminiscences of about 10 of the people involved. It ends with Wilmut's comment: "It would be wrong to say my name's known all the way around the world -- but Dolly's is."
Related Stories
The world's most famous sheep didn't experience accelerated aging due to cloning, University of Nottingham researchers report:
In the scientific version of her obituary, Dolly the Sheep was reported to have suffered from severe arthritis in her knees. The finding and Dolly's early death from an infection led many researchers to think that cloning might cause animals to age prematurely.
But new X-rays of Dolly's skeleton and those of other cloned sheep and Dolly's naturally conceived daughter Bonnie indicate that the world's first cloned mammal had the joints of normal sheep of her age. Just like other sheep, Dolly had a little bit of arthritis in her hips, knees and elbows [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-15902-8] [DX], developmental biologist Kevin Sinclair of the University of Nottingham in England and colleagues report November 23 in Scientific Reports.
The researchers decided to reexamine Dolly's remains after finding that her cloned "sisters" have aged normally and didn't have massive arthritis (SN: 8/20/16, p. 6). No formal records of Dolly's original arthritis exams were kept, so Sinclair and colleagues got Dolly and Bonnie's skeletons and those of two other cloned sheep, Megan and Morag, from the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. Megan and Bonnie were both older than Dolly at the time of their deaths and had more bone damage than Dolly did. Morag died younger and had less damage.
How many times has the story of Dolly's death at the ripe age of 6 (with a supposed genetic starting age of 6 due to shorter telomeres) been used as a bludgeon against cloning?
Previously: Dolly at 20: The Inside Story on the World's Most Famous Sheep
Cloned Sheep Age Normally
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @12:25PM
Ewen Callaway The name is perfect for this article:
1) ewe - female sheep
2) U n call away. Was sent to the farm
I crack myself up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @12:33PM
^ rubbish post
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @01:17PM
^^ Fantastic contribution to mankind post.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @01:41PM
20 years from now, that post will be considered classic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @01:32PM
I assume this is about that cloned sheep rather than some kind of clickbait that hints at being about that topic (no rtfa for me). If so, shouldn't the possessive form it be Dollys', since there are multiple Dollys involved?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 01 2016, @07:43PM
Multiple if you count the original sheep plus the clone? Technically true but since the original was probably an arbitrary sheep, the clone is the only really noteworthy one...
If they had cloned it multiple times I'd agree.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday July 01 2016, @09:07PM
Only one sheep was called Dolly.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @02:17PM
So, for those of us under rocks, what's the best current clone tech can do/give?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @03:12PM
Lamb Chops or is that a sock puppet?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Friday July 01 2016, @06:30PM
creating a clone of an animal was a great advancement for helping us understand DNA and gene expression. cloning itself was a mundane task but achieving it unlocked doors to possibilities previously off limits. sure, glowing modified clone puppies aren't the greatest thing but they too are a step in our advancement toward understanding DNA.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02 2016, @02:41AM
here [youtube.com]