Scientists Will Try To Clone Humans
Scientists from Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco have boldly gone where the federal government fears to tread—they plan to create cloned human embryos as part of continuing stem cell research. By creating stem cells that are genetically identical to a patient, scientists hope to develop therapies for diseases such sickle-cell anemia, diabetes and Lou Gehrig's disease. The human cloning research is privately funded, as the federal financing ban prevents government funding for the work.
It is possible to fix human genetic disorders through cloning, argues Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in his new book, After Dolly. Wilmut, one of the scientists involved in creating the cloned sheep for which the book is titled, explains how an embryo afflicted with a genetic disorder could have its stem cells removed and modified in order to fix the defect. The cells would then be cloned, and from them a doctor would create a new embryo, free of genetic disease, which would be implanted in the mother.
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Two cloned mules failed to take first place in the 20th annual Winnemucca Mule Races, Show & Draft on Sunday June 4th. The two mules, Idaho Gem and Idaho Star, came in 3rd and 7th place, respectively, proving that cloned animals can be fierce competitors. Idaho Gem was the first mule clone and, therefore, the first mule descended from any other, as mules are sterile animals. (Read more about this story here.)
Life Survived Adverse Conditions, Life Succumbed to Adverse Conditions
Minute droplets of oil from 2.4 billion years ago are providing evidence that life on Earth survived a period when the planet was covered with more than a half-mile of snow; an era affectionately deemed "Snowball Earth." The oil, retrieved from ancient rock crystals, contains molecular fossils that scientists can identify as having come from specific life forms. A paper published in the June edition of Geology concludes that eukaryotes and cyanobacteria were alive before "Snowball Earth" and survived the hostile period.
The same meteor that created a 300 mile-wide crater in Antarctica may have also caused a massive extinction 250 million years ago, Ohio State University geologist Ralph von Frese announced on Wednesday. Satellite data shows that the crater, which lies more than a mile beneath a sheet of ice, dates back to the same period as the Permian-Triassic extinction, when nearly all of Earth's animal life died out. Scientists had believed that a series of volcanic eruptions caused the extinction that cleared the stage for the dinosaurs to inherit the Earth.
A tooth extracted from a Neanderthal child found in Belgium has provided the oldest human-type DNA ever found. The DNA is around 100,000 years old, and it shows evidence of a more genetically diverse Neanderthal population than scientists had previously suspected. Researchers had expected to find the more limited genetic variance present in humans around 35,000 years ago, and scientists now postulate that disease or climate change may have wiped out some of the earlier diversity.
Cornell scientists believe they have found evidence of evolution in action in the form of African electric fish called mormyrids. The fish all look the same and have the same DNA sequences, but two groups are distinguished by having different electric "fingerprints," characteristic electric impulses they use to sense surroundings and communicate with other fish. Each fish will only mate with others that have its own fingerprint. As all of the fish are genetically identical, they cannot be classified into two species, but the researchers said they believe the electric fingerprint may be the first step in speciation. (Read more about this story here.)
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