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 don’t know a ton about it, but cloning is happening in domestic horses!
I went to a polocrosse (pretty much lacrosse on horses) clinic last year taught by a top Australian player, and she told us about a horse of hers that was going to be cloned.
She had this World Cup-calibre Australian Stock Horse gelding named Plucker. For non-horse folks, a “gelding” is a castrated male horse. Geldings are much more common than stallions, and stallions are also not allowed to play polocrosse in competition for safety’s sake. Plucker proved to be such a phenomenal playing horse throughout his life, though, that some folks got together and decided his line ought to be resurrected so it can be continued.
It’s not common, but it’s not unheard of. It’s just crazy expensive, which is why it’s more common in polo— “the sport of kings”. I can’t speak for any other disciplines. I’d be shocked if racing wasn’t the most pervasive, though
There is an event horse named Chili Morning who’s been cloned several times, and his clones are the first to really show promise in the competition ring!
Thank you for further confirmation that, as a general rule, if something usually isn’t done because it’s needlessly expensive and overall superfluous, you can assume horse people are doing it anyway
“we already have a very efficient machine for making sheep, it’s called sheep.”
