Tag: cloning

Scientists make embryos from human skin DNA for first time

US scientists have, for the first time, made early-stage human embryos by manipulating DNA taken from people’s skin cells and then fertilising it with sperm.

The technique could overcome infertility due to old age or disease, by using almost any cell in the body as the starting point for life.

It could even allow same-sex couples to have a genetically related child.

The method requires significant refinement – which could take a decade – before a fertility clinic could even consider using it.

Experts said it was an impressive breakthrough, but there needed to be an open discussion with the public about what science was making possible.

Reproduction used to be a simple story of man’s sperm meets woman’s egg. They fuse to make an embryo, and nine months later a baby is born.

Now scientists are changing the rules. This latest experiment starts with human skin.

The Oregon Health and Science University research team’s technique takes the nucleus – which houses a copy of the entire genetic code needed to build the body – out of a skin cell.

This is then placed inside a donor egg that has been stripped of its genetic instructions.

So far, the technique is like the one used to create Dolly the Sheep – the world’s first cloned mammal – born back in 1996.

However, this egg is not ready to be fertilised by sperm as it already contains a full suite of chromosomes.

You inherit 23 of these bundles of DNA from each of your parents for a total of 46, which the egg already has.

So the next stage is to persuade the egg to discard half of its chromosomes in a process the researchers have termed “mitomeiosis” (the word is a fusion of mitosis and meiosis, the two ways cells divide).

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Montana Man Pleads Guilty to Creating Massive Franken-Sheep With Cloned Animal Parts

An 80-year-old man in Montana pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony wildlife crimes involving his plan to let paying customers hunt sheep on private ranches. But these weren’t just any old sheep. They were “massive hybrid sheep” created by illegally importing animal parts from central Asia, cloning the sheep, and then breeding an enormous hybrid species.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, owns and operates the 215-acre “alternative livestock” ranch in Vaughn, Montana where he started this operation in 2013, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Alternative livestock includes hybrids of mountain sheep, mountain goats, and other large mammals which are often used for trophy hunting by wealthy people.

An unnamed accomplice of Schubart kicked off the decade-long scheme by illegally bringing biological tissue from a Marco Polo sheep, the largest sheep in the world, from Kyrgyzstan into the U.S. in 2013, according to prosecutors.

How big are these sheep? An average male can weigh over 300 pounds with horns over 5 feet wide, giving them the largest sheep horns on the planet. The sheep are endangered and protected by both international treaties and U.S. law. Montana also forbids the import of these foreign sheep or their parts in an effort to protect local American sheep from disease.

Once Schubart had smuggled his sheep parts into the U.S., he sent them to an unnamed lab which created 165 cloned embryos, according to the DOJ.

“Schubarth then implanted the embryos in ewes on his ranch, resulting in a single, pure genetic male Marco Polo argali that he named ‘Montana Mountain King’ or MMK,” federal authorities wrote in a press release.

By the time Schubart had his Montana Mountain King he used the cloned sheep’s semen to artificially impregnate female sheep, creating hybrid animals. The goal, as the DOJ explains it, was to create these massive new sheep that could then be used for sports hunting on large ranches. Schubart also forged veterinarian inspection certificates to transport the new hybrid sheep under false pretenses, and sometimes even sold semen from his Montana Mountain King to other breeders in the U.S.

Schubart sent 15 artificially inseminated sheep to Minnesota in 2018 and sold 37 straws of Montana Mountain King’s semen to someone in Texas, according to an indictment filed last month. Schubart also offered to sell an offspring of the Montana Mountain King, dubbed the Montana Black Magic, to someone in Texas for $10,000.

Discussions between Schubart and an unnamed person apparently included what to call this new breed of sheep they were creating. The other person said another co-conspirator had suggested the name “Black Argali,” though noting “we can’t,” presumably because it would give away the fact that these sheep were descended from the argali species.

Schubart pleaded guilty to violating the Lacey Act, and conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act, which makes it a crime to acquire, transport or sell wildlife in contravention of federal law.

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‘I actually had a conversation with Dad’: The people using AI to bring back dead relatives – including a plan to harvest DNA from graves to build new clone bodies

Can artificial intelligence really summon dead relatives back from beyond the grave?

A growing number of people are trying to find out, with pioneers such as inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil using artificial intelligence to recreate lost relatives.

Kurzweil’s attempts to ‘bring back’ his father – who died when Kurzweil was 22 – using AI began more than 10 years ago and are chronicled this year in a comic book by Kurzweil’s daughter Amy.

Kurzweil created a ‘replicant’ of his father by feeding an artificial intelligence system with his father’s letters, essays and musical compositions.

He now has even more ambitious plans to bring his father back to life using nanotechnology and DNA from his father’s buried bones.

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Senator John Fetterman responds to conspiracy theories he has a clone or body-double with ridicule

For the past several weeks a conspiracy theory has spread through Republican internet channels claiming that Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) body has been taken over by a clone.

Despite fictional claims in television, film and literature, human clones do not exist.

“The conspiracy appears to be a continuation of earlier discourse about Fetterman’s speech issues following his stroke now that his speech in interviews is much improved,” MSNBC reported over the weekend. “Fetterman also took the daring step of changing his facial hair. Even such mundane things can become a recipe for conspiracies in such a highly politicized environment.”

Fetterman joked last week, “I’m Senator Guy Incognito,” a reference to a “Simpsons” character who looks exactly like Homer Simpson.

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DAMAR HAMLIN FANS THINK ‘NEW HAND TATTOO’ TIES INTO ‘CLONE’ CONSPIRACY THEORY

Damar Hamlin fans think his ‘new hand tattoo’ ties into a ‘clone’ conspiracy. The ridiculous theories first circulated around the time of his cardiac arrest in early January.

The NFL Honors took place on Thursday evening in Phoenix, Arizona. The annual awards ceremony acknowledges standout achievements and accomplishments from the recent NFL season.

A whole host of NFL stars were in attendance at the event, which saw Patrick Mahomes awarded NFL MVP. However, the most memorable moment of the night came when Damar Hamlin accepted the Alan Page Community Award.

The Bills safety suffered an on-field cardiac arrest against the Cincinnati Bengals on 2 January. He was listed in a critical condition for over a week before he thankfully recovered.

One of the more bizarre things to emerge from Hamlin’s incident was the theory that he died on the field and was replaced by a clone or body double.

As reported by The Independent, conspiracy theorists at the time hypothesised that the FBI and NFL quickly dispatched Hamlin’s body to Cincinnati Medical Centre to hide his death, replacing him with someone else.

Needless to say the theory is completely baseless. However, the theories have once again emerged following the appearance of Damar Hamlin’s ‘new hand tattoo’.

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Scientists clone the first U.S. endangered species

Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.

The slinky predator named Elizabeth Ann, born Dec. 10 and announced Thursday, is cute as a button. But watch out — unlike the domestic ferret foster mom who carried her into the world, she’s wild at heart.

“You might have been handling a black-footed ferret kit and then they try to take your finger off the next day,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret recovery coordinator Pete Gober said Thursday. “She’s holding her own.”

Elizabeth Ann was born and is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret breeding facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. She’s a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988 and whose remains were frozen in the early days of DNA technology.

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