A Lamb Named Dolly
In 1997 cloning became a household term, thanks to Ian Wilmut and colleagues of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, who reported in February the first successful cloning of an adult mammal. The centre of attention, a Finn Dorset ewe named Dolly, by her very existence dispelled decades of presumption that adult mammals could not be cloned and ignited a debate concerning the many possible uses and misuses of mammalian cloning technology.
The concept of cloning in mammals, even in humans, was nothing new. Naturally occurring genetic clones, or individuals genetically identical to one another, had long been recognized in the form of monozygotic (identical) twins, triplets, and so on. Unlike Dolly, however, such clones are derived, as their scientific name indicates, from a single zygote, or fertilized egg. Moreover, clones had been generated previously in the laboratory, but only from embryonic cells or from the adult cells of plants and "lower" animals such as frogs. Decades of attempts to clone mammals from existing adults had met with repeated failure, which led to the presumption that something special and irreversible must happen to the DNA of mammalian cells during the animal’s development. Indeed, until 1997 it had been generally accepted dogma that adult mammalian cells are no longer genetically totipotent, or capable of giving rise to all of the different cell and tissue types (e.g., liver, brain, and bone) required for making a complete and viable mammal. It was presumed that somatic-cell differentiation, the process by which a single fertilized egg is converted into all of the different cell types found in an adult, involved some irreversible step. That Dolly remained alive and well long after her birth--that she had a functional heart, liver, brain, and other organs, all derived genetically from the nuclear DNA of an adult mammary-gland cell--proved otherwise. At the very minimum, the specific tissue from which Dolly’s nuclear DNA was derived must have been totipotent. By extension, it was reasonable to suggest that the nuclear DNA of other adult tissues also remains totipotent. With the success of Dolly, this speculation became a testable hypothesis.
To appreciate more fully the ramifications of Dolly’s existence, it is necessary to consider in some detail the circumstances of her creation. Dolly did not spring from the laboratory bench fully formed but developed to term normally in the womb of a Scottish Blackface ewe. Although the DNA in her cell nuclei was derived from a mammary-gland cell taken from an adult Finn Dorset ewe, that DNA had to be fused by electrical pulses with an unfertilized egg cell, the nucleus of which had been removed. The egg cell was taken from a Scottish Blackface ewe, and later another sheep of the same breed served as a surrogate mother. Furthermore, in order for the DNA to be accepted and functional within the context of the egg, the donor mammary-gland cells first had to be induced to abandon the normal cycle of growth and division and enter a quiescent stage. To do this, researchers deliberately withheld nutrients from the cells. The importance of this step had been determined experimentally, and although a number of hypotheses had been raised to explain its necessity, which, if any, of them was correct remained unclear. Nevertheless, a number of fused couplets formed embryos, which were transferred to surrogate ewes. Of 13 recipient ewes, one became pregnant, and 148 days later, which is essentially normal gestation for a sheep, Dolly was born.
Dolly’s unusual conception and normal birth raised a host of questions--some scientific, others social, ethical, or even religious. Some of the questions were answerable, and others were not. Of the scientific questions, at least two were thought to be experimentally approachable from studies of Dolly or her offspring.
The first question addressed the issue of X-chromosome inactivation, the process by which normal mammalian females limit the expression of most of the genes located on their X chromosomes. In brief, a normal mammalian male receives an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the father and so carries only one X chromosome; a female, on the other hand, receives an X from each parent and so carries two. To avoid the overexpression of genes that would occur with two active X chromosomes, a female effectively shuts down nearly all of the genes on one of her two X chromosomes very early in embryonic development. Which X is inactivated in each individual cell of the female, however, appears to be a matter of chance. Some cells inactivate the maternally derived X; others, the paternally derived X. As the embryo grows and develops and the cells divide and differentiate, the progeny of each cell "remember" the original decision, so that normal adult females end up as mosaics, with some of their cells expressing genes only from their maternally derived X chromosomes and others only from their paternally derived X chromosomes.
The implication for cloning using DNA from adult female cells is that unless the X-chromosome inactivation that exists in the donor cell is somehow reversed and then randomly reestablished in the cells of the developing embryo, the resultant female clones will not be mosaic. All of their cells will express only those genes on the X chromosome that had not been inactivated in the donor cell. If that chromosome carries any abnormal genes, the female clones could fail to express the normal equivalents of those genes present on their other (inactivated) X chromosome and, as a result, be afflicted with any of a range of biological abnormalities early or later in life. That Dolly appeared healthy suggested either that the X-chromosome inactivation was reversed and rerandomized in her cells or that none of her essential X-chromosome genes were abnormal. This was a testable distinction.
A second scientific question raised by Dolly’s creation involved the mitochondria, cell organelles that carry their own set of genes distinct from the nuclear genes and that exist outside the nucleus in the cell cytoplasm. Even though the two sets of genes exist independently, they must operate interdependently for the cell to function normally. Since Dolly’s mitochondria were derived from a Scottish Blackface donor egg and nuclei from a Finn Dorset mammary-gland cell, an important question was whether there would be any incompatibility. Clearly, Dolly’s good health suggested otherwise. An extension of this question remained, nevertheless. Could mammalian cloning technology be applied to study experimentally the effect of mitochondrial DNA mutations on whole organisms, rather than only on cultured cells, as had been done in the past?
Finally, both scientists and nonscientists were confronting the social and ethical Pandora’s box of questions raised by mammalian cloning. On the positive side, cloning of nonhuman animals may greatly simplify the otherwise cumbersome manipulation of domestic livestock currently required for engineering genetic improvements in resistance to disease. It may also facilitate the production of lifesaving pharmaceuticals for human use--e.g., the production of human insulin in nonhuman animal milk. In addition, the application of cloning to the creation of founder individuals in a breeding population of animals could aid in saving endangered species otherwise doomed to extinction.
On the other hand, would racehorse owners attempt to clone champions rather than breed them? If so, how would this approach be regarded by the horse-racing industry? Much more important, what of cloning humans? Does the concept of cloning violate the sanctity of the individual? During the year some observers voiced concerns about misguided zealots attempting to clone political or religious leaders; others envisioned hope for desperate parents of children in need of a perfectly matched donor for a bone-marrow transplant, pointing out that some parents were already opting to pursue pregnancy after pregnancy in an attempt to create such a donor. In 1997 human reproductive technology allowed for in-vitro fertilization, genetic characterization of early embryos prior to implantation, and a multitude of genetic and other forms of both pre- and postnatal presymptomatic testing. One could only wonder to what new accepted practices human cloning might lead. (See Special Report.)
This article updates heredity.