April 27, 1999
Cloned triplet goats called a world first
Produced by scientists in Montreal
By MARLENE HABIB, CP
TORONTO -- Montreal scientists are staking claim to producing the
world's first cloned goats -- triplets Danny, Clint and Arnold -- using
the so-called Dolly technique, with hopes of developing "super-milk" for
medical uses.
The month-old animals are the kids of Nexia Biotechnologies Inc., which
has been raising high-tech goats on its production farm near Montreal
for the last couple of years.
The triplets are believed to be the first livestock animals of any kind
cloned in Canada using nuclear transfer -- a technique first used to
produce Dolly the sheep in 1997, said Nexia president Jeffrey Turner, a
former McGill University geneticist.
Nexia is in a worldwide cloning race that began with Dolly, who was
created by Scottish scientists as the spitting image, in every way, of
her mom. It was the first time a mammal had been cloned using cells from
an adult, and it fuelled a worldwide debate on the dangers of animal and
possibly human cloning.
Since then, cloning has advanced to include playing with different
cells, genes and proteins to achieve specific results. Cloned cows from
Japan, for instance, produce high-quality beef at a competitive price,
and lab-generated mice in different parts of the world are helping boost
biomedical research.
Unlike Dolly, who's a duplicate of her mom, Danny, Clint and Arnold are
only identical to each other, said Turner.
"What Scottish scientists did with Dolly was try to see if the technique
worked, and what we've done is apply the technology in a
product-development way," he said from Montreal.
Nexia scientists took cells from an adult goat and transferred them into
fertilized eggs from another goat. The DNA, or genetic makeup, in the
eggs had been removed and replaced with DNA from specially cultured
cells.
The result, after eight months and $1 million in research, is three cute
kids with coats displaying the same splotches of grey, brown and white.
Turner said goats were chosen because of their short gestation period --
five months -- so more animals can be clone-bred in as little time as
possible, while producing as much milk as possible.
The goat announcement yesterday follows the birth last August of Nexia's
genetically altered goat, Willow. Nexia is among international companies
producing so-called transgenic animals that have a human gene in
addition to their normal genetic makeup.
Last year, scientists in the United States also produced triplet goats
using the same, older technology.
The hope was Willow and other transgenic animals would produce milk
containing human proteins that can be extracted for use in
pharmaceuticals.
But only five out of 100 transgenic births were successful, said Turner,
leading Nexia to tackle cloning.
Danny, Clint and Arnold will be tracked for several months. If healthy,
Nexia will go on to the next stage of research, adding spider gene cells
to the goat-cell-egg mixture. These new cloned goats will hopefully
produce milk containing spider-silk proteins.
The proteins would be extracted for the manufacture of spider silk under
Nexia's BioSteel trademark. Spider silk can be used for artificial
tendons or ligaments, tissue repair, wound healing and sutures.
Clint, Arnold and Danny are further fuelling the cloning debate.
After Dolly, the U.S. and United Kingdom moved to limit the progression
to human cloning, notes Ingeborg Boyens, a Winnipeg writer who
researches the pros and cons of cloning and genetic engineering.
Copyright © 1999 The London Free Press a division of Sun Media
Corporation.
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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