World's first cloned rabbit
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Submit comment July 24, 2007 12:00am
CHINA has produced the world's first cloned rabbit using a
biological process that takes cells from a foetus, state media said
today.
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 foetal 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
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22126545-5001021,00.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSHKG23359420070724
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1152972007
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/6216699.html
