Japanese scientists cloned bull from decade old frozen testicles
In one of the first of kinds, Japanese biologists successfully able to clone a bull using cells recovered from testicles that had been taken from a dead animal and frozen without cryoprotectant in a −80°C freezer for 10 years.This makes first report of the resurrection of a dead livestock specimen from a non-cryoprotected frozen organ by cloning raising the hopes of restoring extinct species, such as woolly mammoths, if we are able to retrieve some live cells from an organ or animal that has been frozen in a freezer or in the Siberian permafrost.
Scientists used the testicle of a bull named Yasufuku, which was preserved in -80°c freezer for 13 years , to extract live cells.These extracted cells behaved pretty well and grew as normal cells. Normally frozen samples without cryoprotectant are considered to be inappropriate for use as a nuclear donor for somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), but scientists from proved it is not the case. When they transferred 16 SCNT embryos from these cells into 16 synchronized recipient animals,which resulted into five pregnancies and four cloned calves developed.
Caption:
(A) A male calf derived from Yasufuku’s testicles was born on 30 November 2007. Parturition was induced by injection of prostaglandin F2α after 287 days of gestation and the recipient animal delivered this calf two days after induction. The calf’s birth weight was 18.5 kg and he remains healthy at the time of writing. (B) A male calf, derived from a vitrified SCNT embryo, that was delivered by Caesarean section on 5 March 2008, after 286 days of gestation. The calf’s birth weight was 47.5 kg; he died two days after birth. (C) Male calves derived from vitrified SCNT embryos. The calf with an ear tag “c95” was born on 22 July 2008, at 287 days of gestation. Its birth weight was 32 kg. The calf with an ear tag “c66” was born on 31 July 2008, at 288 days of gestation. Its birth weight was 30 kg. Parturitions were induced as described above. Both remain healthy at the time of writing.
Scientists believe these kind of clonings are not very easy to pull off, as the researchers still dont have an exact way to transfer DNA damaged by Siberian deep-freezing, but things aren’t loking that bad for seeing a woolly mammoth soon in a zoo nearby your home.
Image Credit and Citation: Hoshino Y, Hayashi N, Taniguchi S, Kobayashi N, Sakai K, et al. (2009) Resurrection of a Bull by Cloning from Organs Frozen without Cryoprotectant in a −80°C Freezer for a Decade. PLoS ONE 4(1): e4142. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004142
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