Dolly the Sheep ......has died.... in Off Topic

ID:190258
 
Feb 14 2003, 2:44 pm
Thats right, shes dead.. ya happy now ya anti-clone mutants? ;)

Dolly the sheep had to be put down at (i think) 6 years of age, which is young even for a sheep.

Scientists had to put her down after they recognized that her cells were suffering from more wear than the average sheep at that age, (aging much faster than usual)

Poor dolly, I salute you with this lambchop..
#1 Feb 14 2003, 2:54 pm
It's turning out to be just like BladeRunner...or whatever that movie was with the clones... the 6th day I think... yeah...
#2 Feb 14 2003, 3:06 pm
Dareb wrote:
Dolly the sheep had to be put down at (i think) 6 years of age, which is young even for a sheep.

Scientists had to put her down after they recognized that her cells were suffering from more wear than the average sheep at that age, (aging much faster than usual)

Specifically she was suffering from advanced lung disease, likely caused by the early onset of aging that was already known to afflict her. They'll be testing that out but the link seems obvious, so I don't think anyone expects the results to say otherwise.

Genetic errors in clones are quite common, due to the procedure used to extract DNA from the host cell.

Lummox JR
#3 Feb 14 2003, 4:06 pm
In response to Sariat (#1)
yea, the movie with arnold shwartz(somethingorother)

good movie. room for a sequel since we dont see the doctor after hes killed and told to be cloned.

His clone could have very well escaped. But im always this way about movies.
#4 Feb 14 2003, 5:26 pm
One theory is that when the clone sheep was made, the new cells were actually already old. In other words, when Dolly was "made", she already was as old as her original. So if you cloned a baby from a thrity year old man, then the baby would be as if it is thirty years old, but this is just a theory.
#5 Feb 14 2003, 7:29 pm
In response to Sariat (#1)
Sariat wrote:
It's turning out to be just like BladeRunner...or whatever that movie was with the clones... the 6th day I think... yeah...

Whoa, that's weird -- the first thing I thought of when I read the original post was J.F. Sebastian, the guy with Methuselah's Syndrome (or as Pris put it, "accelerated decrepitude"). Great minds run in the same channels, I guess.
#6 Feb 14 2003, 7:50 pm
In response to Choy Li Fut (#4)
Although the idea is valid, the cell in which the animal came from was not old, it was an embryo, the cell that the DNA came from makes no diffrence, DNA doesnt age as the body does, it stays the same, unless it mutates, which happens, but it doesnt age.
#7 Feb 15 2003, 2:44 pm
In response to Scoobert (#6)
Scoobert wrote:
DNA doesnt age as the body does, it stays the same, unless it mutates, which happens, but it doesnt age.

Sorry Scoobert, I gotta call you on that one. The ends of the enzymes that make up the DNA have little bits of accumulated junk on them. As a cell reproduces(ages), these are worn away, exposing the actual DNA to harmful situations, accelerating genetic damage.

This single factor does more to limit a creatures lifespan than any other factor, aside from massive trauma. It will define a limit to maximum human age, long after cancer and heart disease are cured. A single cell may only reproduce so many times, before the act of reproduction causes loss of genetic material.

In the case of Dolly, The process of transplanting the DNA from one cell to another might have damaged this protective layer on the enzymes, causing Dolly to age faster.
#8 Feb 15 2003, 3:24 pm
In response to ThreeFingerPete (#7)
Well with cloning will soon come genetic engineering, so this problem may soon be eleminated? How is genetic engineering coming along anyway?
#9 Feb 15 2003, 4:08 pm
In response to Choy Li Fut (#8)
not taribly fast, but as it gets better it gets easyer. You know how you see movies about viruses that change people(Resedent evil)? Well thats the plan to modifie genes on someone already past 1 cell, viruses are not alive, they drift onto a cell, attach and release something that replaces some genes, when it does this, the gene will then prodice more of its self, well the idea is to make a virus that changes the DNA to do something more productive, like take out the bad genes and replace them with good ones. Thats the basic idea.
#10 Feb 16 2003, 4:14 am
In response to Scoobert (#9)
Just to clear up any confusion - BladeRunner did not have Arnold in it - that was Harrison Ford... =)
#11 Feb 18 2003, 4:22 pm
In response to digitalmouse (#10)
He wasn't referring to Blade Runner. And wrong subthread. ;-P
#12 Feb 18 2003, 7:01 pm
In response to Scoobert (#9)
Scientists are already doing this virus-change-DNA thing for stuff like cystic fibrosis. We just learned this in biology class.