CASE STUDY

The very first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult parent cell was a sheep

named Dolly. Dolly was cloned on 5 th of July 1996 and has been called “the world’s most

famous sheep” by a source including Scientific American and the BBC News. The brilliant

scientists who made Dolly were Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and their colleagues at the Roslin

Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. Dolly’s birth was announced seven month later and this news

stunned the world. Unfortunately, Dolly did not survive long enough. She died in the year 2003

due to premature death.

Dolly attracted millions of column inches throughout her life and led to long running

debates about the ethical issues of cloning, which became louder with news of her death in the

year 2003. Sheep usually can live to twice her age but she suffered from a type of lung disease

usually seen in much older animals. This is because; during nuclear transfer process, scientist

uses aged parent chromosomes.

The result of her death was predictable to some critics as cloning is a relatively new thing

and it is difficult to get the technology right. In fact, in over 250 attempts at cloning a sheep,

only Dolly was successfully cloned.

Process

The cloning of Dolly was not known by the world until a year after its birth. Scientist at

the Roslin Institute had attempted 277 times to clone sheep from adult parent cells and Dolly was

the only success over this hundreds attempt. Nucleus was taken from a Finn Dorset sheep, and

the donor cells were reprogrammed to keep them alive but the growing process was ceased. The

cells were then injected into an egg cell without a nucleus. Then the cells were fused by using

electricity. After the egg cell was cultured for a week, they implanted it into a surrogate, a

Scottish Blackface ewe.

Dolly's birth

There were two most important main reasons the stunned the scientific community. First

was that Dolly existed at all. Secondly, the creation of a viable clone of a complex mammal was

unexpected.

An adult mammary cell needs to be taken from the udder of another sheep in order to

create Dolly. Her named was taken after the singer Dolly Parton. They removed all the cellular

machinery to leave all the genetic material and nucleus containing DNA to create life. Then, they

introduced this into an oocyte( an unfertilized egg) that had it nucleus removed. The process of

introduction is known as somatic cell transfer and to kick start the fertilization, a jolt of

electricity was used. When the hybrid cell began to divide mitotically it develops into a

blastocyst and were then implanted into a surrogate mother.

 For most of her life, Dolly had leaded an excellent health and became a mum when she

was bred with a Welsh Mountain Ram. The first lamb was born in year 1998 and was named

Bonny. One year later, Dolly gave birth to a set of twins and then another year later she had

triplets.

Life

Dolly spent her entire life under the observation of scientists at Roslin Institute. She were

allowed to breed with a ram and she had six lambs. All of her off springs lead a normal life. H

years later, Dolly began to have difficulties in walking. She was diagnosed to suffer from

arthritis and scientists had put her on anti-inflammatory drugs.

Dolly's death

Dolly started to suffer from health problems in year 2002 when she was diagnosed with a

form of arthritis. Later then, she developed a progressive lung disease and a decision was made

to have put her down. On 14 th February 2003, Dolly was been put to death because she no longer

has any quality of life due to her suffer of progressive lung disease and severe arthritis. A Finn

Dorset sheep has an average life expectancy around 11 to 12 years, but Dolly only manage to

live about six years of age. According to the Acting Director of Roslin Institute, Dr Harry

Griffin, “Sheep can live to 11 or 12 years of age, and lung infections are common in older sheep,

particularly those housed indoors. There is no evidence that cloning was a factor in Dolly

contracting the disease.” A post-mortem test was made and the results shows that Dolly had a

form of lung cancer called Jaagsiekte, a fairly common illness of sheep which is caused by a

retrovirus JSRV. The cause of Dolly suffering from arthritis was never discovered and there is
still a long ongoing debate about whether Dolly died prematurely as the result of being clone.

This had led to a further study of Dolly’s genetics. From their findings, they found that the

structures in her cells called the telomeres were slightly shorter than it would be expected in a

sheep of her age conceived naturally. So from this, it shows that Dolly’s DNA was ‘older’ than

her body and this made scientists realized that Dolly might die young.

Legacy

Dolly’s creation leaves our world a long lasting legacy. The technology used in cloning

her showed us that our cells are capable of doing much more things that benefits our body. It

holds out hope for the process of therapeutic cloning for treatment of cancer and degenerative

cell illness for example, where new healthy cells can be created from differentiated cells that

have been wound back to their embryonic state. It also shows us the capability of our body to

repair its own damage through its own specific repair mechanisms. Dolly’s success had made

cloning technology continues to improve and provides the scientific world with a better

understanding of cloning technology.