China claims a first with cloned rabbit
Pastor Dale Morgan
China claims a first with cloned rabbit*
24 Jul 2007 03:31:55 GMT
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, July 24 (Reuters) - China has produced the world's first cloned
rabbit using a biological process that takes cells from a fetus, state
media said on Tuesday.
The female rabbit, which weighed 60 grams at birth in February, was now
growing normally at an animal centre in Shanghai, the China Daily said.
Scientists have cloned mice, cattle and other animals since the first
cloned sheep, Dolly, was born in 1996. Malaysia is even trying to clone
some of its threatened leatherback turtles to save them from extinction.
But it was only in 2002 that French scientists produced the world's
first cloned rabbit using cells from an adult female rabbit, the paper said.
The Chinese rabbit was the world's first to be cloned using "fibroblast"
cells from a fetal rabbit, the China Daily said.
"Chinese cloning research has reached a global advanced level," the
newspaper quoted Wang Hongguang, director of the China Centre for
Biotechnology Development, under the Ministry of Science and Technology,
as saying.
"We can reproduce almost all the cloning results in top-class
laboratories around the world. However, we are lacking in original
creations such as the newly cloned rabbit."
It was not clear if the findings had been published in a scientific
journal or independently verified.