So basically, Dolly the sheep was an accident. They were trying to clone sheep cells, and they ended up unintentally generating an embryo, which turned out to be viable, hence we got Dolly.
The method they used proved unsuccessful in primates, and the risk of cloning primates (and thus humans) outweighs the benefits (because there really aren’t any real benefits, scientifically speaking), so they don’t do it.
Where it’s most likely to be used is in agriculture, cloning livestock embryos.
What they use cloning for is stem cells. Cloning adult cells to create stem cells means they don’t need embryonic stem cells, which is probably the most important thing that came from cloning research in the past 25 years.
The reason it was so important was that it proved that you didn’t need an embryonic cell to clone live animals. The nucleus of an adult cell contains all the DNA you need to clone, because Dolly was cloned from an adult cell, which was previously unheard of. Now they know that adults cells can be reprogrammed back to an embryonic stage, and was a major breakthrough for stem cell research.
So basically, we don’t hear about cloning anymore because they aren’t doing anything that is so exciting it will capture the world’s interest, like Dolly did. But it was a major scientific breakthrough that is still very important.
One of my favourite cloned animals is Kurt, a Przewalski’s Horse who was cloned from the preserved samples from a horse that died in the 90’s so that he can hopefully introduce some additional genetic diversity into the Przewalski’s Horse population. Oh hey there’s actually two clones of this one horse now, the second one is Ollie who was born last year. Kurt is now about four years old. Last I checked he was at the San Diego Zoo.
We don’t tend to clone animals that are more common because we already have a very efficient machine for making sheep, it’s called sheep.
I’m glad to hear about this, I remember back in high-school, after Dolly, Bush made doing anything with stemcells illegal or some shit, and I thought we just stopped researching this stuff.
This is breaking containment into the TERF enclosures which I very much expected, but I will happily shout from the rooftops that furry porn artists are more productive and beneficial to society than JKR’s incessant whining on the elon musk dick riding app about how much she hates trans people
JKR: Wrote an okay children’s book series about how neoliberalism is great and any attempt to rectify the injustices of the world is literally unthinkable.
Furry Porn Artists: Force you to ask questions like “what is humanity”. They stand aside and outside looking in, seeing what we are and what we truly all yearn for: 14 werewolves behind an Arby’s.
@agentldiddy , priority alert! Get every hand on deck and help our comrades in blue, green, red, orange, yellow, black, white, pink, grey, purple, brown, and other colours win this battle!
this was so huge. the alien he’s arguing with uses standard pro-life arguments that you still hear today. he literally talks about all life being sacred (even though his plan to deal with overpopulation is to kill people with meningitis). and this aired only 4 years after contraception was legalized in the united states. in context this is actually even more pro-contraception than it appears in these caps.
I just recieved horrible news from @nael-helles… their family’s refuge has been bombed, many of them are injured including him. Please please please help them.
This is Rafah which the occupation army is preparing to enter and these small square-shaped plots are the tents of the displaced and they contain more than a million displaced people,reality on the ground is much worse than it appears from above,as there is no greater suffering..
I asked one of my (male) friends to stop using the phrase “man up” and he has been using “fortify” for the past two weeks instead and it’s just a little thing but honestly it makes a difference
and tbh it’s also pretty funny when I start to deflate in the library and he leans over and goes “FORTIFY”
Dude, fortify is bangin’. That makes things like you’re some kind of RPG character. Fortify is way better than “man up.”
“unalive” should just mean the opposite of undead. if undead means a dead thing thats alive, unalive shuld mean an alive things thats dead. no i dont have any examples. ☝️yet
retail employees
Computers that still work but have become totally obsolete
The Pledge of Allegiance is some cult shit and nobody can convince me otherwise. Like, why do we ingrain it into our youths so early that loyalty to our country is so important that it’s the first thing we do everyday? Like I can’t promise that I wanna go to Canada when I’m old enough.
The modern pledge is actually far different than how it used to be. The original was decently tame in 1892:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
The idea was to instill patriotism and unification following tensions that still existed after the civil war. In fact the first revision was to add the word “to” before “the republic” so speakers knew it could not be the rebel flag to which they pleged allegiance:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and [to] the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In the 1920s, with immigration on the rise they wanted to ensure that immigrants were pledging loyalty to the United States and not to their home country so it was revised again:
“I pledge allegiance to my[the] Flag [of the United States of America] and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
And the final and most current revision occurred in 1954 during the Cold War, when Congress formally adopted this version which includes “under God” as it was meant to indicate that we were a nation with God on our side, in stark contrast to those “Godless Commies”:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation [under God], indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
So yes the pledge is and always has been some cult shit.
telling a joke on tumblr is fun but watch out! if it gets over 1000 notes your joke is automatically exposed to people who have never once heard a joke in their life.
“why would you say that” because it was funny. “but that isn’t true” it’s the funniest way to express that sentiment. “why would you do that” because it’s a joke.
Tumblr is so intuitive to me that I’m fascinated by people who use algorithms. I was explaining to a Grindr date why I only use Tumblr and I explained that you can opt out of the algorithm and he was like “then what do you look at?” And that question was so crazy to me. What do you mean what do I look at? I look at the people I follow in reverse chronological order. I’m pretty sure that was the default before meta properties and Twitter got algorithms.
telling a joke on tumblr is fun but watch out! if it gets over 1000 notes your joke is automatically exposed to people who have never once heard a joke in their life.
“why would you say that” because it was funny. “but that isn’t true” it’s the funniest way to express that sentiment. “why would you do that” because it’s a joke.
