cloning

Sarah-Kate Templeton of the London Times has reported that a Cornell University group created a genetically-modified human embryo:

The Cornell team, led by Nikica Zaninovic, used a virus to add a gene, a green fluorescent protein, to an embryo left over from in vitro fertilisation.

The research was presented at a meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine last year but details have emerged only after the HFEA highlighted the work in a review of the technology.

Zaninovic pointed out that in order to be sure that the new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally need to grow the embryo and carry out further tests.

The Cornell team did not have permission to allow the embryo to progress, however.

Another article about the work appears in the New York Times by writer Andrew Pollack:

But the researchers, at Cornell University, say they used an abnormal embryo that could never have turned into a baby.

"This particular piece of work was done on an embryo that was never going to be viable," said Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. He said the purpose of the work was stem cell research.

That did not stop some from criticizing the work, saying that the techniques being developed could be used by others to create babies with genes modified to make them smarter, taller, more athletic or better looking. They also said there should have been more public discussion.

"It's an important ethical boundary that scientists have been observing," said Marcy Darnovsky, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a watchdog group in Oakland, Calif. "These scientists, on their own, decided to step over that boundary with no public discussion."

I don't really have any comments, but I wanted to point to these stories because I've been teaching a class that addresses these issues. Also, it strikes me that the opposition is poorly stated -- expressing an aversion to "smarter, taller, more athletic or better looking" children doesn't make much sense on its face.

One possible interpretation, that people may be forced to use such technologies if they want their children to remain competitive (the "private school" problem) won't carry much weight with most people, who don't feel such pressure now despite the many ways that people may invest in their children. Another, that such technologies may have "unforeseen side effects" (that is, the Frankenstein problem) doesn't argue against the technologies in general, it merely suggests an appropriate amount of caution.

Anyway, this discussion demands a longer post, and I just wanted to point to these articles.

Here's an AP story about cloning bullfighting bulls. Yes, I know, "bullfighting bulls" is redundant, but what else are you supposed to call them? I suppose corrida bulls.

The story adds to last year's discussion about horse cloning (horserace horse cloning?). But here the main theme is the affection that owners have for their bulls:

"I am extremely fond of this bull," del Rio said at his ranch in this town outside Madrid, watching 16-year-old Alcalde graze with some of his latest offspring -- mere toys next to their prolific, half-ton father. "He has given us tremendous satisfaction."

This has become quite the going concern:

ViaGen spokesman Ben Carlson confirmed the orders from del Rio and Fernandez, but would not comment on pregnancies or expected birth dates. Carlson said the breeders would pay standard cattle cloning prices: $17,500 for the first calf, $15,000 for the second, $12,500 for the third and $10,000 for the fourth and beyond.

ViaGen has cloned about 300 mammals, including show pigs, rodeo horses and bucking broncos, since its founding in 2002. But this is the world's first go at cloning the breed that takes on matadors in the deadly minuet of bullfighting.

The common strain between the bulls and the horses is the time you have to wait to see if your careful breeding made any difference:

Even in its traditional mode, bull breeding is a slow, hit-or-miss business. Studs are crossed with cows carefully selected for feistiness through simulated fights in the ring, albeit without bloodshed. Then the rancher has to wait a few years for the resulting bull to grow up, and see if it has the right stuff.

They're worried that the clones won't have the same qualities as the originals; calling it all an experiment.

"Horse racing editor" Mike Brunker checks in with an excellent MSNBC article on cloning in the horse racing world. Racing officials are, so far, against it, but cloning solves a number of problems for owners and breeders.

Not least, what do you do when a gelding becomes a champion?

Among the cloned horses is Clayton, the 14-month-old son of the legendary quarter horse Scamper, a gelding. Scamper won a record 10 consecutive barrel racing world championships from 1984 to 1993 in events sponsored by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and is the only barrel-racing horse to be inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. He also helped make his rider, Charmayne James, the first million-dollar cowgirl and the all-time leading money winner in barrel racing.

...

[Co-owner Tony] Garritano said he and James paid $150,000 to ViaGen, an Austin, Texas, firm that is a leader in the commercial applications of cloning, to restore the otherwise extinct bloodlines of Scamper. Scamper, while still in good health at 30, can't be bred because he was gelded at an early age.

I suppose that's a sinking feeling -- you've got a 10-time world champion quarter horse, and you can't breed him. And of course, castration may not be merely incidental -- it may have affected the performance -- so you can't just say never geld the horse. Particularly with utility horses, you may never have the idea you are going to breed one, but then he turns out to be a champion.

"Carrying on bloodlines" seems to be one of the main appeals of cloning. The article describes how owners stop racing their champion thoroughbreds at 3 years old, just to put them out to stud, because that's where the money is. Perversely, they are breeding for a particular kind of early performance, which has effects on training and life histories of the animals.

Critics have silly arguments. For example, "How much fun would it be to watch a basketball game with 10 Michael Jordans?" Well, if you didn't want to at least maintain the fiction that every team is nearly equally competitive, you wouldn't have an NBA draft! For horses, since the point of racing is to get to the finish line fastest, you're not really promoting phenotypic diversity now, are you?

What I didn't know is that there are cloned mules in competition:

An estimated 1,000 people turned out on June 5, 2006, to watch two cloned mules compete in the Humboldt Futurity in Winnemucca, Nev., a contest that was billed as the first race between cloned animals. One of the clones -- Idaho Gem -- finished third while his identical twin, Idaho Star, finished seventh in the field of eight. 

Heck, I didn't even know there was mule racing!

[T]he third mule, Utah Pioneer, never kicked it in.

"He went into race training, but the feeling was that he just wasn't going to cut it as a racing mule," Vanderwall said. "He has returned to the university campus and is just hanging out."

Uhhh...ummm... Oh, never mind.

Meanwhile, the thoroughbreeders are dead-set against (it seems they profit too much on the current system, where your horse has 2 years to make good, and if not, you come back for more sperm), and the quarter-horse breeders are trying to find ways around the current ban (they run their horses for many years, have more of a feeder system in the utility horse market, and have non-regulated events of various kinds where they might run a cloned horse).

What interesting politics!

Nicholas Wade writes to answer the mammoth cloning question. I know, nobody cares about anything else. It's always, "Clone, clone, clone!"

Well, keep this in mind:

The reconstructed sequence of DNA units would then need to be turned into an actual mammoth genome. Mammalian genomes are made up of chromosomes of about 100 million DNA units in length and are beyond the capacity of current synthesis. Still, researchers at the Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., say they are close to synthesizing the genome of a bacterium that is 500,000 units long.

There's a lot of doing between a bacterium genome and a chromosome. Don't hold your breath.

And then, there's the picture:

Inspecting the baby mammoth carcass. Photo credit: Sergei Cherkashin/Reuters

Here's a piece of advice: If the room is warm enough for tank tops, it's too warm to preserve permafrost mammoth sperm.

No, that's not Henry Harpending. At least, I don't think it is...