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- Scientists are building the world's first clone farm.
A researcher from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which created Dolly
the sheep, has moved to New Zealand to help build up a 1,500-strong herd
of genetically engineered cows.
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- The cows, intended to produce medicines in their milk,
will mark the first attempt to use cloning in commercial agriculture.
Eventually clone farms could be set up throughout the world to help combat
diseases including multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis.
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- Many New Zealanders are outraged by the project, which
they have dubbed "Frankenstein's farm". They say that it and
another scheme for a 10,000-strong flock of "transgenic" sheep
will destroy New Zealand's reputation for being free of genetic engineering.
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- AgResearch, the New Zealand government agency behind
the farm, has established its cloning programme at Ruakura, on the North
Island, using friesian holstein cattle. The cloning programme is led by
David Wells, who formerly worked at the Roslin Institute with Ian Wilmut,
one of the creators of Dolly.
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- Dolly was created by destroying the nucleus of a sheep's
egg cell and replacing it with another taken from an adult cell of an entirely
different sheep. The cell divided and grew into an embryo that was implanted
into a surrogate mother.
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- Wells has used a similar technique to create 16 cloned
friesian heifers. He has added a further refinement, also perfected at
Roslin, by inserting human genes into the cloned embryo.
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- The result is that each heifer contains the human MBP
gene which, in humans, enables the body to manufacture myelin. This substance
surrounds nerve cells, enabling them to conduct impulses, and is absent
or faulty in people with multiple sclerosis (MS).
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- When the heifers are mated, their female offspring produce
milk containing human myelin basic protein (MBP). This can be extracted
and could prove useful as a treatment for MS, a neurological disorder that
affects about 85,000 people in Britain. AgResearch also hopes to introduce
the human myostatin gene - responsible for controlling muscle growth -
into other cows to produce compounds to help people with muscular dystrophy,
a crippling genetic condition that stops muscle development.
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- Dr Harry Griffin, a spokesman for Roslin, confirmed that
it had close links with AgResearch. "There is a small community of
scientists in this area and David Wells and Ian Wilmut are following each
other's progress and working closely," he said.
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- Roslin also has close links with PPL Therapeutics, which
is seeking to establish a 10,000-strong milking flock of transgenic or
genetically modified sheep on a hill farm at Mangakino, in the central
area of the North Island.
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- The sheep have been genetically modified to contain the
human gene for alpha-1-anti-trypsin (AAT). This can be extracted from their
milk to treat conditions such as cystic fibrosis.
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- PPL likes to operate in New Zealand because, as well
as its freedom from the sheep brain disease scrapie, land is cheap and
rules governing genetic engineering are relatively weak.
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- That attitude could change rapidly. Protest groups such
as Revolt Against Genetic Engineering (Rage) are gaining support and the
Green party - which holds the balance of power in a coalition with Labour
- is pressing the government to impose a moratorium on field trials of
cloned and genetically altered animals.
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