Clones are built into life: a cow from a test tube gave birth in Russia

Scientists have created offspring from a cloned animal

The cloned cow Flower for the first time in Russia gave birth to a calf Dekabristka. Thus, scientists have proven the suitability of clones for procreation. The MK correspondent learned all the details of the most complicated genetic operation.

– Obtaining offspring from a cloned animal is not an end in itself for us, – explains the director of the Federal Research Center for Animal Breeding – VIZH named after academician L.K. Ernst Natalia Zinoviev. – It is more important to prove that the animals cloned by us are full-fledged, capable of procreation. Now, with the birth of our Decembrist girl on December 30 last year, our Center, the first in Russia, is on a par with the world’s leading laboratories, in which offspring have already been obtained from cloned cows, sheep, and pigs.

If it is proved that the Flower can produce offspring, then the cell line used to obtain it is healthy, and on its basis it is possible to create a platform for genome editing, that is, to obtain animals with “given” characteristics.

But let’s look at what scientists have done, in order. In April 2020, VIZhe obtained the first cattle clone in Russia using somatic cell nuclei as donors. I ask Natalia Anatolyevna to tell how it happened.

“The somatic cell of the future cow, which has a full set of chromosomes of the future animal, was planted in an egg cell previously freed from genetic material,” says Zinovieva. – In order for it to merge with the cytoplasm of this, in fact, a cell alien to it, it was affected by an electrical impulse. As a result, the nucleus of the somatic cell actually became the nucleus of the egg, which began to divide successfully. Then another 7 days passed, during which the embryo reached a stage suitable for transplanting it into the body of a surrogate mother. This surrogate mother gave birth to our Flower.

Scientists had some concerns about the future course of the experiment, since Flower, as is common with many clones, was born with excess weight. She weighed 63 kilograms at a rate of 35-40 kg. But when the time came for her to give birth herself (fertilization took place traditionally using artificial insemination), she coped with it perfectly. Her daughter Decembrist was born with a weight of 40 kilograms, she feels well, but is still under the daily supervision of veterinarians.

Having worked out the technology of somatic cloning, scientists hope to start using it for genome editing in the near future. It is produced at the very first stage, when a somatic cell with certain data falls into the hands of biologists. By switching on or off in the future certain of its genes, it will be possible to obtain more prolific animals or, for example, cows with increased resistance to diseases.