BBC News,
Helen Briggs, 27 June 2013
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The mouse was cloned from a blood cell |
Circulating
blood cells collected from the tail of a donor mouse were used to produce the
clone, a team at the Riken BioResource Center reports in the journal Biology of
Reproduction.
The female
mouse lived a normal lifespan and could give birth to young, say the
researchers.
Scientists
at a linked institute recently created nearly 600 exact genetic copies of one
mouse.
Mice have
been cloned from several different sources of donor cells, including white
blood cells found in the lymph nodes, bone marrow and liver.
The
Japanese research group investigated whether circulating blood cells could also
be used for cloning.
Their aim
was to find an easily available source of donor cells to clone scientifically
valuable strains of laboratory mice.
The team,
led by Atsuo Ogura, of Riken BioResource Center in Tsukuba, took blood from the
tail of a donor mouse, isolated the white blood cells, and used the nuclei for
cloning experiments, using the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep in
Edinburgh.
Reporting
their findings in the US journal, Biology of Reproduction, they said the study
"demonstrated for the first time that mice could be cloned using the
nuclei of peripheral blood cells".
'Invaluable
strains'
They added:
"These cells could be used for cloning immediately after collection and no
donor animals need to be euthanised.
"This
technique would be applicable for generating genetic copies of invaluable
strains of mice, which cannot be preserved by other assisted reproductive
techniques such as conventional in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic
sperm injection."
Scientists
in Japan have years of experience in cloning mice.
A team at a
linked institute recently revealed they had produced almost 600 mice from one
donor mouse after 25 consecutive rounds of cloning.
The
research is aimed at large-scale production of high-quality animals for farming
or conservation purposes.
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