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Laying hold on eternal life?

Nature Biotechnology volume 18, pages 599–600 (2000)Cite this article

A recent paper by Lanza et al.1 in Science raises interesting new questions about the relationship between cloning, telomere biology, and aging. The work confirms recent observations that live animals can be produced by nuclear transfer from cells that have undergone long-term culture2.But this study takes an unexpected step further, by showing that cloning from senescent cells not only restores a youthful proliferative capacity to somatic cells, but actually extends their life spans markedly.

In their paper, the authors cultured bovine fetal fibroblasts through many population doublings so that the cultures approached senescence. Nuclear transfer from these populations was then used to produce fetuses and calves for study. Cells were derived from the fetuses and observations made of cell life span in culture and of telomere length.

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Figure 1: Characterization of senescent donor somatic cells used for nuclear transfer1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. professor at the Roslin Institute, Midlothian, Roslin, EH25 9PS, UK

    Ian Wilmut & John Clark

  2. chief scientific officer at Geron Corporation, 230 Constitution Drive, Menlo Park, 94025, CA, USA

    Calvin B. Harley

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  1. Ian Wilmut
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  2. John Clark
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  3. Calvin B. Harley
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Wilmut, I., Clark, J. & Harley, C. Laying hold on eternal life?. Nat Biotechnol 18, 599–600 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/76430

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