World’s first cloned Arctic wolf born in China

The puppy named Maya was created using a donor cell of a different species and an embryo that was implanted in the uterus of a beagle dog.

The Arctic wolf was first cloned by a Beijing-based genetics firm that took a donor cell from a wild female Arctic wolf and combined it with an embryo grown inside a beagle, which shares a genetic lineage with ancient wolves, to make the process successful.

Maya was born in June, but Singogen Biotechnology waited until she was 100 days old to announce her birth, hoping the clone would be healthy.

Arctic wolves are not endangered like other breeds, but Singogen hopes to use the process to save other species.

Although this is a scientific breakthrough, animal cloning is still controversial, with activists saying that the animals involved suffer from the surgeries needed to obtain donor cells and transfer embryos.

Another argument against the process is whether the method violates any moral prohibition, such as people “playing God” by producing embryos.

However, many scientists believe that animal cloning is a way to save endangered species.

Maya the puppy was created using the same technique as Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal cloned in Scotland in 1996, somatic cell nuclear transfer.

However, Dolly was euthanized at the age of six when she was diagnosed with a lung tumor.

At this point Maya is said to be in good health and exhibiting the behavior of a traditional Arctic wolf pup.

Sinogene Biotechnology CEO Mi Jidong said, “We started a research collaboration with Harbin Polarland to clone the Arctic wolf in 2020. After two years of painstaking effort, the arctic wolf was successfully cloned. This is the first case of its kind in the world.”

The firm began the search by constructing 137 new embryos from enucleated (the process of removing the nucleus from the cell) oocytes, which are cells in the ovary, and somatic cells, followed by the transfer of 85 embryos into the wombs of seven beagles.

The genetics company behind the project wants to research how to keep animals at greater risk than Maya’s counterparts.

However, they still have a long way to go. “It is relatively easier to clone dogs and cats,” Jidong said.

“We will continue to work in this area. In the next step, we can clone rare wild animals other than dogs or cats… and it will be more difficult.”

But some in the scientific community have raised concerns, in particular, about the health of cloned animals and how cloning will affect biodiversity.

A cloned puppy is destined to spend the rest of its life in captivity due to its lack of socialization.

Animal cloning was the holy grail for scientists before Dolly, but now it’s becoming a way to revive species that have since disappeared from the face of the earth.

Christina DENISYUK.

Source www.dailymail.co.uk

Photo: Twitter/ China Science