Re: Why did scientists clone dolly?

Dolly was created as part of the development of the method for improving the production of certain useful substances that could help in the fight against particular diseases. The creation of Dolly shattered a belief widespread among biologists that cells from adult mammals cannot be persuaded to regenerate a whole animal.

To clone Dolly, PPL scientists took a cell from the udder of an adult sheep, and kept it in a nutritional solution. They then deprived the cell of the nutrients which made the cell's DNA go into a 'sleeping' state. At the same time, the nucleus of a sheep egg cell from another ewe was removed, and the nucleus from the sleeping cell was inserted into the now nucleus-free egg cell.

The two combined cells with were then given an electric shock, and to the scientists' surprise, the combined cells acted like a fertilized egg cell and started to divide and grow, thus starting the development of Dolly. The egg was then implanted into a third ewe and a few months later, Dolly was born. She was an exact copy of the ewe from which the the udder cell was taken (although she does have cell components such as mitochondria from the egg donor).

There are several web sites discussing Dolly but here are two of the more interesting ones: http://www.sciam.com/explorations/030397clone/030397beards.html

http://www.cancerpoint.org/dolly.htm