Dolly, female Finn Dorset sheep that lived from 1996 to 2003, the first clone of an adult mammal, produced by British developmental biologist Ian Wilmut and colleagues of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, Scotland. The announcement in February 1997 of Dolly’s birth marked a milestone in science, dispelling decades of presumption that adult mammals could not be cloned and igniting a debate concerning the many possible uses and misuses of mammalian cloning technology.
The concept of mammalian clones, even humans, was not new at the time of Dolly’s birth. Among mammals, naturally occurring genetic clones, or individuals genetically identical to one another, had long been recognized in the form of monozygotic (identical) twins. Unlike Dolly, however, such clones are derived from a single zygote, or fertilized egg, and thus they are clones of one another, rather than clones of another individual. Moreover, clones had been generated previously in the laboratory, but only from embryonic cells that were either undifferentiated or only partially differentiated. In animals, the production of clones from fully differentiated (adult) cells (e.g., skin or muscle cells) had been carried out successfully only in lower species, such as frogs.
For decades, scientists had tried and failed to clone mammals from existing adults. The repeated failures led scientists to speculate about the significance of the timing and process of cell differentiation in the developing mammalian embryo. Of particular interest were changes that occurred to DNA during an animal’s development, whereby patterns in gene expression were altered as cells became increasingly specialized in function. It was realized that, through the process of differentiation, adult mammalian cells lose totipotency—the ability to become any of the different cell types required for making a complete and viable animal. It was presumed that the process was irreversible. The successful production of Dolly, however, proved otherwise.
Dolly was cloned from a mammary gland cell taken from an adult Finn Dorset ewe. Wilmut and his team of researchers at Roslin created her by using electrical pulses to fuse the mammary cell with an unfertilized egg cell, the nucleus of which had been removed. The fusion process resulted in the transfer of the mammary cell nucleus into the egg cell, which then began to divide. In order for the mammary cell nucleus to be accepted and functional within the host egg, the cell first had to be induced to abandon the normal cycle of growth and division and enter a quiescent stage. To accomplish that, researchers deliberately withheld nutrients from the cells. The importance of the step had been determined experimentally, though an explanation for its necessity was lacking. Nevertheless, starting with a collection of mammary cell nuclei and host egg cytoplasms derived from Scottish Blackface ewes, a number of fused couplets successfully formed embryos. The reconstructed embryos were transferred to surrogate Scottish Blackface ewes. Of 13 recipient ewes, one became pregnant, and 148 days later, which is essentially normal gestation for a sheep, Dolly was born.
Dolly remained alive and well long after her birth, with a functional heart, liver, brain, and other organs, all derived genetically from the nuclear DNA of an adult mammary gland cell. The technique used to produce her later became known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). SCNT has since been used to generate a wide variety of mammalian clones, from different types of adult cells; its success in producing clones of primates, however, has been notably limited.
On February 14, 2003, Dolly was euthanized by veterinarians after being found to suffer from progressive lung disease. Her body was preserved and displayed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
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