Mammals cannot be cloned infinitely, Japanese mice study shows

A landmark 20-year mouse cloning experiment reveals a fundamental biological limit, challenging the promise of endless genetic replication. | Contesto: cronaca

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• Mammals cannot be cloned infinitely, Japanese mice study shows

Contesto

After a two-decade-long experiment involving over 1,200 cloned mice, Japanese researchers have discovered a fundamental biological limit: mammals cannot be cloned indefinitely. The study, which began with a single donor mouse, demonstrated that while clones can be successfully produced from other clones for multiple generations, the process inevitably fails, with success rates plummeting to zero by the 13th generation. This finding, emerging from the world's most extensive serial cloning project, directly challenges the theoretical possibility of creating endless genetic copies of an animal and imposes a new understanding of the constraints within reproductive biotechnology. The research project, a monumental undertaking in developmental biology, meticulously created what scientists term "re-clones." Each new generation was cloned not from the original donor, but from the clone of the previous generation. Initially, the process showed promise, with cloned mice themselves proving fertile and capable of producing normal offspring through natural reproduction. However, the act of repeatedly using somatic cell nuclear transfer—the cloning technique—to create a lineage of clones from clones introduced accumulating, and ultimately insurmountable, errors. The gradual decline in cloning success over the generations pointed to an epigenetic degradation, where the chemical markers controlling gene expression become irreparably scrambled through the repeated laboratory manipulation of the nucleus. This discovery carries significant implications for the fields of agriculture, species conservation, and biomedical research, where cloning technologies hold substantial promise. The vision of perpetually replicating elite livestock, perfectly replicating research animal models, or resurrecting endangered species from limited genetic material now faces a newly defined biological barrier. The study suggests that even with perfect technical execution, an intrinsic limit exists within the mammalian cell's epigenetic machinery. It indicates that the DNA of a somatic cell can only be reprogrammed back to an embryonic state a finite number of times before the essential instructions...

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Categoria: cronaca