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Dolly is a clone — and no longer alone

Nature volume 394, pages 315–316 (1998)Cite this article

After the furore that surrounded the arrival of Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from differentiated adult cells, doubts were raised that she really was a clone. Those doubts can now be set aside, and the technique has been further validated by the cloning of mice.

Two years ago, a report1 that lambs had been successfully cloned from cultured, differentiated cells (that is, cells committed to be just one particular type) passed relatively unnoticed. Just one year later, the world sat up and took notice when the cloning of cells derived from an adult udder resulted in the birth of Dolly2. Subsequent discussions revealed the depth (or shallowness) of our homocentricity — very little was said about what we can learn from cloning experiments. This misplaced emphasis led to repeated statements, culminating in a letter by Sgaramella and Zinder3, that a single case of cloning from an adult cell would have to be repeated before it could be taken seriously. Moreover, they suggested that Dolly might actually have been cloned from a fetal cell that had contaminated the udder-cell culture through a biological or laboratory accident.

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Figure 1: Cloning strategies — the subject to be cloned determines the relative importance of various problems and questions related to cloning.

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  1. the Department of Developmental Biology, Max-Planck-Institut für Immunbiologie, Stbeweg 51, Freiburg, 79108, Germany

    Davor Solter

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  1. Davor Solter
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Solter, D. Dolly is a clone — and no longer alone. Nature 394, 315–316 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28485

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