A researcher named Shoukhrat Mitalipov has successfully cloned primate embryos from adult cells in a technique known as therapeutic cloning. The researcher has finally thrown some light on the process by which human embryonic stem cells can be produced from cloned adult body cells.
If the research can continue doing the good work then scientists will be able to produce stem cells from the person’s own body tissue and the risk of rejection of the stem cells will be minimized.
This research has also brought scientists closer to clone a full-term adult primate such as a human.
The evidence for the success in the research was provided by Oregon National Primate Research Centre in Beaverton, USA. The researcher was able to achieve somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in a primate. This means that the researcher was successful in cloning a rhesus monkey embryo from adult cells and generates embryonic stem cells from them. The process was earlier thought to be impossible and scientists were never too confident that it can still be achieved despite all odds. But still the researcher, Mitalipov made two batches of embryonic stem cells from 20 cloned embryos.
Cloning from adult cells has been achieved many times before, such success was found in species such as mice, sheep, pigs, cows and dogs, but when it came to primates, researchers always encountered an insoluble barrier making the process almost impossible. But after the splendid work by Mitalipov, the barrier is down and now researchers can make use of this technique to try and develop the first human clone.
Mitalipov used skin cells from a ten year old male rhesus monkey and then generated cloned embryos and ultimately two lines of embryonic stem cells, which he has named as CRES or Cloned Rhesus Embryonic Stem Cells.
Commenting on the hard luck of all other researchers who are trying to achieve the same fete, Mitalipov stated that all other researchers have been using standard cloning procedures for the process and some procedures such as removing chromosomes from the egg and then relying on visualizing them using a dye and UV light, damages the essential factors that allow the resultant cell to reconfigure itself prematurely. Whereas he himself used a visualizing technique which does not require the use of dye or UV light, but instead uses polarized light to detect fibres that carry the chromosomes instead.
This research has surely shown other researchers a way by which we can hope that human cloning is just around the corner and the day when we will see the first cloned human is much closer than anticipated.
Via: Cosmos Magazine
