
Healthy clones: Dolly the sheep's heirs reach ripe old age - benologist
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-cloning-dolly-idUSKCN1061Z9
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Animats
This outlines one of the problems with genetic engineering. The debug/test
cycle is a few lifetimes.

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bane
I know this is tongue in cheek, but I think it's instructive to look at
different "development" disciplines and see both why they're different and see
what we can learn from them.

For example, in genetic engineering, given the constraint that the debug/test
cycle is lifetimes, they use different approaches:

1\. Plan, model and simulate

2\. Use living models that have fast lifetimes (bacteria, fruit flies, etc.)

3\. Use results from #2 to improve #1 and continue to tighten the feedback
loop.

In traditional engineering, there's groups that do nothing but test the stress
points of different materials, subtract out a safety margin and put that into
design databases so when you build a bridge, you know exactly how much steel
to buy to make sure it doesn't fall down.

and so on.

It's also instructive for other engineering disciplines to learn from software
(and why it's very different). Lots of traditional engineering disciplines
look down on software engineering because, from the outside it looks a lot
like beta-testing in the wild. But part of building software is doing so _and_
providing working software!

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Retric
I have worked places that put very close to zero bugs in the wold, and buggy
messes. The problem is customers don't care or are already locked in. How
often do the people buying corporate software actually use that software?

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revelation
Makes for a good headline but genetically identical (clones) of mice and other
animals have been routine test subjects in pretty much any study for a very
long time now.

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louprado
Curious, but how does a researcher acquire cloned mice ? The JAX Mice, which
are the most-published mouse models in the world[1] does not offer clones for
sale on their website. Anyone know the source and cost ?

[1][https://www.jax.org/jax-mice-and-services](https://www.jax.org/jax-mice-
and-services)

~~~
ghkbrew
I'm guessing GP is referring to the fact that most popular mouse strains for
research are, in theory, isogenic (genetically identical). This is achieved by
inbreeding the mice for multiple generations until they are statistically
certain to be homozygous at every gene locus. The standard is 20 generations.
Thus making all the mice in a strain as close genetically as clones or twins

There are of course issues with random mutation. So the mice end up not being
_exactly_ identical. JAX actually puts a lot of effort into trying maintain
the genetic stability of their strains through methods such as freezing
founder sperm and rebreeding it into later generations.

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jessriedel
Naive question: do the clones have to have all genes for recessive disorders
eliminated so they can interbreed without risk? If so, how did they get that?

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ghkbrew
I've never done it, but I think those are just naturally bred out by breeding
healthy mice from each successive generation.

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Someone
Many of the strains they sell aren't healthy. If you enter a condition or
disease like 'lung cancer' or 'paralysis' in [https://www.jax.org/mouse-
search](https://www.jax.org/mouse-search), you'll find they sell a mouse
that's susceptible to a form of it.

For example,
[https://www.jax.org/strain/004863](https://www.jax.org/strain/004863):

 _" Homozygous Snap25 knock-out mice exhibit neonatal lethality. Late embryos
lack spontaneous movement or sensorimotor reflexes, and abnormal innervation
and muscle fiber development is observed."_

Breeding mice that die at birth is an unsolved problem I'm sure they are
thinking of, so they sell the heterozygous variant (carriers of the gene)

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ralfd
> Breeding mice that die at birth is an unsolved problem I'm sure they are
> thinking of

That sentence is both horrible, absurde, macabre and logical at the same time.

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fiftyacorn
For anyone interested the museum in Edinburgh has put Dolly back on display in
one of its new galleries

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rhplus
Is it definitely the original? I've heard there are a lot of copies on the
market.

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shasheene
Other than being kept outside rather than in a barn, what are the reasons for
these clones having longer life expediencies than Dolly the Sheep?
Improvements in this somatic cell nuclear transfer process?

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felixbraun
The paper in Nature Communications:
[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160726/ncomms12359/full/nc...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160726/ncomms12359/full/ncomms12359.html)

