Who was Dolly the sheep and how does cloining work?
A new BBC Two documentary that airs TONIGHT (December 8) at 9pm examines Dolly the Sheep's story 25 years on.
Created at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian Dolly is the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
When was Dolly the Sheep cloned?
Dolly became the first cloned mammal in 1996 in Edinburgh.
Dolly was cloned from a cell taken from the mammary gland of a six-year-old Finn Dorset sheep and an egg cell taken from a Scottish Blackface sheep.
Sadly, Dolly died in 2003 with arthritis and cancer.
In 2015, Britain welcomed its first cloned dogs after Laura Jacques and Richard Remede from Silsden, West Yorks, paid £67,000 for their dead boxer, Dylan, to be replicated in a lab in South Korea.
They got two identical puppies, which they called Changer and Shadow.
How does cloning work?
Scientists take live cells from a living animal, or one that has been dead for no more than five days.
Then they implant nucleus DNA – the building blocks of life – from the cells into a “blank” egg of the same species that has had its DNA removed.
The egg is given electric shocks to trigger cell division and is then implanted into a surrogate female animal of the species.
You can make a limitless number of clones - and biologists now want to produce more monkey clones for research into human diseases such as cancer.
MOST READ IN TECH
What other animals have been cloned?
So far, 25 other animals have been clone, these include:
- Banteng
- Black-footed ferret
- Brown rat
- Camel
- Carp
- Cat
- Domestic cattle
- Coyote
- Deer
- Dog
- Frog (tadpole)
- Fruit flies
- Gaur
- Goat
- Horse
- House mouse
- Monkey
- Rhesus macaque
- Crab-eating macaque
- Mouflon
- Mule
- Pig
- Pyrenean ibex
- Rabbit
- Sheep
- Water buffalo
- Wolf