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Mad-Cow Resistant Calf Cloned in China

by Medindia Content Team on Jun 7 2006 4:11 PM

Chinese scientists have successfully cloned a cow with genes resistant to mad cow disease. The success story was marked by the birth of a 55-kg calf in the eastern province of Shandong

Researchers at the Laiyang Agro-Science Institute in Shandong claimed to have used gene-transplant technology to introduce the genes to the calf cloned from cells of an adult cow.

The lead researchers were Dong Yajuan and Bo Xuejin , who had first tasted success with cloning China's first and second healthy cows in 2001, in collaboration with a Japanese university.

Three years before a team led by presently disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk had cloned cows with a protein structure resistant to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

However further tests would be performed on the calf, as it grows, to verify the effectiveness of the transplanted genes.


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