Tuesday, Apr 14, 2009
Gulf News
Dubai: The Camel Reproduction Centre (CRC) has announced the birth of the world's first cloned camel.
The female calf, named Injaz (meaning achievment), was born at the Dubai-based centre last Wednesday.
The scientific team at the centre, headed by Dr Lulu Skidmore and Dr Ali Redha, said the camel was born after an uncomplicated gestation period of 378 days.
She was produced from cumulus cells harvested from the ovary of an adult female camel, which were grown in culture before being frozen in liquid nitrogen.
Dr Skidmore, Scientific Director of the CRC, said: "The birth of Injaz is a great achievement for the laboratory as she is the result of great skill and teamwork. We have reached a breakthrough in reproductive science.
"It's been a big team effort and Injaz wouldn't be here today without the help of everybody involved; it is the culmination of three years of work."
Dr Nisar Ahmad Wan, Senior Reproductive Biologist at the CRC, produced Injaz by injecting one of the adult cells into a camel oocyte (immature ovum or egg cell) from which the nucleus had been removed. The oocyte and the adult cell were then fused with a tiny split-second electrical pulse and chemically activated to induce them to start dividing just like a normal fertilised egg.
The resulting embryo was cultured for seven days in the laboratory before it was transferred back into the uterus of a surrogate camel. Pregnancy was diagnosed 20 days later by ultrasound and monitored thereafter for the next twelve months.
The DNA of Injaz's cells and that of the original ovarian cells have been tested using microsatellite DNA analysis at the Molecular Biology and Genetics Laboratory in Dubai.
They have been found to be identical, thereby proving that Injaz is a clone of the original female camel.
Dr Skidmore added: "Every animal is cloned in a different way; it is a very specialised and complicated process.
Obviously the ethics of cloning are always going to be brought into questions but we have achieved a very important breakthrough because cloning allows us to preserve the genetics of the species.
"If a racing camel, or a milk-producing camel, gets too old or injured it can be very difficult for them to breed, so cloning provides a way of saving the species [from extinction].
"Our research programme at the CRC gives a means of preserving the valuable genetics of our elite racing and milk producing camels in the future. Injaz, who is 30 kilos, seems to be happy and is doing all the right things so far."
The CRC, which was established in 1989, not only breeds camels, but carries out genetic studies on old and new-world camelids.
The centre also collects and transfers fresh and frozen/thawed embryos and carries out artificial insemination with fresh or frozen semen. It is now the main camel reproduction research centre throughout the UAE.
Rama the 'Cama" was born just over a decade ago as the world's first viable hybrid between a camel and a guanaco (related to the wild llama). The camas were conceived through artificial insemination, whereby llamas were inseminated with camel semen and ovulation induced by hormone injection.
The centre had another success in 2008 when identical twin camel calves, Zahi and Bahi, were born in Dubai.
The male twins were produced using a technique called embryo micro-manipulation.
Cloning: How it works
Cloning is the process of producing populations of genetically-identical indivduals. Cloning occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually.
The world's first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell was Dolly the Sheep, who was produced on July 5, 1996 at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Gulf News 2009. All rights reserved.
