Scientists Have Re-Cloned Mice To the 25th Generation 134
derekmead writes "Dolly's mere existence was profound. It was also unusually short, at just six years. But scientists in Japan announced yesterday they have succeeded in cloning mice using the same technique that created Dolly with more or less perfect results: The mice are healthy, they live just as long as regular mice, and they've been flawlessly cloned and recloned from the same source to the 25th generation. Researchers claim it's the first example of seamless, repeat cloning using the Dolly method—known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT)—in which the nucleus from an adult source animal is transferred to an egg with its nucleus removed. Until recently, the process was fraught with failures and mutations. But the team led by Teruhiko Wakayama, whose results were published today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, was able to create 581 clones from the same original mouse. Scientists, including Dolly's creator, have long felt the process was still too unstable—and too wasteful of precious eggs, given the failure rate—to be used on humans any time soon. But perhaps it's not so far off, after all."
Hard to believe (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing greater than me, would be to have 12 clones of me. Hopefully they also have a compact clone model, so I can call him "mini-me."
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Funny)
Most slashdotters have been waiting 20+ years for a hot girl to be interested in us, what's another 20?
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Funny)
A statement emblematic of so many issues, but I'll choose to respond with snark:
What makes you think a clone would ever go out with you?
Hasn't bad sci-fi taught you anything? Despite being genetically identical to humans, because they are, clones mysteriously exhibit a creepy lack of free will and/or near-identical personality to the original(despite a developmental history that includes no life experience other than 'grow to apparent age of ~20 years with alarming speed in tube full of medical fluid'), perfect for producing armies of robo-hitlers or servile sex kitten harems!
It's probably because they only get allocated one soul per genome or something, couldn't make any less sense than the answers usually provided....
Re:Hard to believe (Score:3, Funny)
Most slashdotters have been waiting 20+ years for a hot girl to be interested in us, what's another 20?
For me, it's 40 plus long years of digital pr0n and gummy input devices.
But you kids should see my ASCII collection. From six feet back and with squinted eyes, I mean.
CAPTCHA = "miseries", I kid you not.
Re:Copyright (Score:2, Funny)
wouldn't your conception be prior art?