Maybe you know already all bananas are the same as every other banana because they're clones. That's great for bananas but it doesn't work like that for mammals and this was the subject of the research. (Science Daily: Cow gene study shows why most clones fail)
Hat tip to one of my old home towns since the research was performed at the University of California, Davis campus. They call themselves the Aggies so research focused on cattle is not a surprise. For the quick flash of Davis if you have ever been there, pull up the image of Picnic Day, one of the finest times to be there.
Note: it's really not that cool to kill the genetic diversity in bananas since one good-going fungus will wipe them out around the world and that's happened several times. Somehow they get the plantations started again from some kind of base stock but the overall approach hardly seems the rational way to do it.
Cloning cattle is an agriculturally important technology and can be used to study mammalian development, but the success rate remains low, with typically fewer than 10 percent of the cloned animals surviving to birth. The majority of losses are due to embryonic death, a failure during the implantation process, or the development of a defective placenta.
- Science Daily
The bulk of the article presents the reasons the clones fail and that led to the following conclusion:
"We now understand why clones fail, which can lead to improvements in the process of cloning of animals," said Lewin. But, he cautioned, "Our discoveries also reinforce the need for a strict ban on human cloning for any purposes."
"It's amazing that the process works at all, demonstrating the great plasticity that developing animals have to adapt to extreme conditions," Lewin said.
Hat tip to one of my old home towns since the research was performed at the University of California, Davis campus. They call themselves the Aggies so research focused on cattle is not a surprise. For the quick flash of Davis if you have ever been there, pull up the image of Picnic Day, one of the finest times to be there.
Note: it's really not that cool to kill the genetic diversity in bananas since one good-going fungus will wipe them out around the world and that's happened several times. Somehow they get the plantations started again from some kind of base stock but the overall approach hardly seems the rational way to do it.
Cloning cattle is an agriculturally important technology and can be used to study mammalian development, but the success rate remains low, with typically fewer than 10 percent of the cloned animals surviving to birth. The majority of losses are due to embryonic death, a failure during the implantation process, or the development of a defective placenta.
- Science Daily
The bulk of the article presents the reasons the clones fail and that led to the following conclusion:
"We now understand why clones fail, which can lead to improvements in the process of cloning of animals," said Lewin. But, he cautioned, "Our discoveries also reinforce the need for a strict ban on human cloning for any purposes."
"It's amazing that the process works at all, demonstrating the great plasticity that developing animals have to adapt to extreme conditions," Lewin said.
- Science Daily
- Insert lengthy editorial on reduction of genetic diversity is bad, very bad. -
The matter of genetic diversity is not reviewed in the article so my immediate question to the researchers is what will be done if a way to clone mammals is discovered.
- Insert lengthy editorial on cloning humans -
We don't want to play any sci fi with this since you have heard the horror sci fi on killing genetic diversity and you have seen the sci fi of cloning humans in "Star Wars." Those movies really weren't sci fi but they did look cool. Lucas had his win the first time people saw that leap to hyperspace.
Maybe you think that visual is kind of old hat, Junior Spaceman, but put yourself back in 1977, stoned as Jesse James, and completely blowed away by it.
Ed: how stoned did Jesse James get?
No idea but there were drugs all over the place back then.
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