At 07:35 PM 8/9/01 -0500, Harvey wrote:
>I personally wouldn't choose to clone myself with
>today's technology. The telomere effect could make my cloned body or organs
>pre-aged.
As I understand it, the telomeres are reset during nuclear transfer.
Dolly's were 20% shorter than you'd expect in a beast of her age at the time,
http://www.sciam.com/explorations/1999/062199dolly/
< Her telomeres are shorter than they should be for a three-year old ewe.
They are instead the length expected of a six-year old animal, which is the
age of the sheep from whom Dolly was cloned. >
I'm not so sure; since most of the original TTAGGGs are lopped during
normal fetal development, surely you'd expect much more depletion than that
if her telomeres hadn't been somewhat repaired.
Here are some sites:
http://www.cnb.uam.es/~mblasco/labo/
(look for the scampering mouse, it's very sweet)
and links at the end, e.g. to:
http://resolution.colorado.edu/~nakamut/telomere/telomere.html
(the Telomere Club)
Of course it's also true (2001) that
< The cells of cloned mice show no signs of premature aging despite being
copied through six generations, according to a new study. In fact, some of
the cells showed signs of getting younger. >
http://www.msnbc.com/news/463998.asp
Damien Broderick
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