Q&A

DISCOVERY EDUCATION SCIENCE CONNECTION

A: I’m a clone. Dr. Wilmut and his team cloned me from my mother.Q: Oh, I see. Yes, my daughterlooks just like her mother, too.Spitting image. Same hair, eyes,mouth, way of standing, even thesound of her voice. It’s uncanny.A: Maybe you don’t understand.Your daughter may have a lot ofher mother’s traits, but she hasyour genes as well. My mother andI are genetically identical. That’swhy I’m so famous. It was the first time that an adult mammalwas cloned.Q: The first clone ever?A: Oh, no, the first clone from anadult mammal. Other living thingsare clones. Quite a few plants, infact. Seedless grapes are clones.Human identical twins are clones

Q: Thanks for joining us, Dolly.Your birth was the focus ofenormous media attention backin 1996. How was that for you?A: Well, as you can imagine, itwas a bit overwhelming for ayoung ewe from Scotland. But Dr.Ian Wilmut and the scientists atRoslin Institute were very kind andI’ve had a lot of support.Q: Dr. Wilmut is …A: My father.Q: Your father!? A: Oh, I didn’t mean it literally!But I’ve always thought of him asmy father.Q: I guess you and your ramfather weren’t close.A: It’s not like that. I don’t have afather at all.Q: Uh, Dolly, how is thatpossible?

Hello,Dolly

Ladies and gentlemen, thank youfor joining me. In the studio withme is a guest you’ve probablyheard a lot about, but this is herfirst opportunity to explain herselfto the media. Her birth in 1996 was quite possibly the biggestscientific news of the 1990s. Sheis, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most famous sheep on planet Earth. It is my great pleasure tointroduce to you: Dolly.

wrong with so many cloneattempts. It’s possible that it has todo with gene imprinting—amolecular tag showing whether agene comes from the mother orthe father. Obviously, a clonewould throw off such a system.The clones’ fetal growth andmetabolism show many risks.That will certainly be the focus ofmuch research if cloning becomesmore common.Q: Dolly, it’s really been apleasure having you, and mostenlightening. Best of luck.

from my mother and placed themin the egg cell of another sheep.That cell was placed in the uterus ofa third sheep. Then I developed inthe womb like any sheep embryo.Q: Why didn’t they just use egg cells?A: Egg cells only have half thenumber of chromosomes of othercells. They need another half-set ofchromosomes, which comes fromsperm cells, to start producing alamb. So scientists “tricked” an eggcell, as it were, into thinking it hadbeen fertilized.Q: Quite an achievement. Andyou’re quite a sheep, Dolly. Yetsome people were quite worriedwhen you were cloned.A: Yes, a lot of the controversyfocused on the fact that sheep andhumans aren’t that different, inevolutionary terms. A grape and afrog are one thing, but as soon as alarge mammal like myself wascloned, people understood thathuman cloning was a very realpossibility. And that has hugeimplications. I’m not going to gothere. You should talk to somehumans about that.Q: Of course. One last question,and I hope this isn’t too sensitivefor you. Quite a few attempts toclone mammals have failed. Manyof the small clones die in theuterus, and sometimes theanimals bearing the clonedembryos have died as well. Youngclones who appear to be healthyhave died suddenly from birthdefects. Can you shed any light onthe problems?A: Well, I’m in good health so far.Scientists aren’t sure what has gone

DISCOVERY EDUCATION SCIENCE CONNECTION

of one another. In 1952, scientistscreated the first clones. They usedcells from frog embryos to cloneseveral frogs. Artificial twins, inother words.Q: Who could tell? Sheep lookpretty much alike to me.A: I beg your pardon! A FinnDorset sheep and a ScottishBlackface are as different from oneanother as any two humans.Q: Oh, I’m sorry, no offenseintended! You and your mother,though, must look exactly alike.You must think alike, too. Youmust have exactly the samepersonality. Talk about being achip off the old block.A: We’re not as alike as you wouldguess. My development—and thisis true of any animal, sheep as wellas humans—was affected incountless ways that weren’t writtenin my genes. The exact conditionsin the womb, how much a childeats, the amount of exercise he orshe gets, a childhood illness thatcould stunt the growth a bit—allthese things make clones slightlydifferent. Take a look at humanidentical twins if you don’t believeme: you can almost always finddifferences even though the DNAis identical. And of course ourminds and personalities are quitedifferent, because learning andexperience play a huge role in whathappens upstairs.Q: That’s fascinating. I’m still alittle puzzled by this thing of yournot having a father. Aren’t youmissing some, what do you call‘em, chromosomes?A: I have the normal number. TheRoslin scientists took udder cells

DOLLY:THE SIX-STEP PLAN

1 A cell is taken from the udder ofSheep Number 1 (a Finn Dorsetewe). The cell is “starved” for fivedays, which tricks the cell intostopping its normal cycle of growth,so it doesn’t divide.

2 An egg is taken from Sheep Number 2. The nucleus is removed.

3 Chromosomes are taken from theudder cell of Sheep Number 1 andinserted into the empty egg cellnucleus of Sheep Number 2.

4 The cell is given an electricalshock to start development.

5 The embryo is transplanted into the uterus of Sheep Number 3 (a Scottish Blackface ewe).

6 The embryo develops in the womb.Dolly is born as though she wereNumber 3’s daughter. Maybe she is;but she shares none of her traits.She is the clone of Number 1.