Chapter 12 postscript

Regarding the implantation of human genes in the process of biological reproduction, the latest news can be found in the newspapers, as follows: (Agence France-Presse, London, 24th) The British "Financial Times" reported on Thursday that Scottish scientists who pioneered the use of cloning to create the world's first cloned sheep "Dolly" have now cloned another sheep called "Dolly". Polly", the latter differs from the former in that a set of human genetic material is implanted in its body.Both the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh and its financial sponsor, the PPL Therapeutic Society, hope that Polly will be the animal that commercializes cloning biotechnology.

A set of human genes they implanted into "Polly" caused his milk to produce a human protein, and this milk can be expressed for some patients who cannot produce milk due to hemophilia and bone disease .The use of replication technology can ensure that each sheep is female and can produce milk.The protein extracted from "Poly" is expected to be clinically tested in 1999. Coleman, director of the research institute under the PPL Therapeutic Society, said that their idea to produce some ready-made cattle and sheep that can quickly provide therapeutically valuable proteins has now been realized.

The newspaper said the process of making "Polly" was to first take a cell from a grown sheep and then insert a set of human genes into the nucleus of the cell, which was then integrated into another cell whose nucleus had been dug out The embryonic cells of sheep were implanted into ewes. The newspaper said that the scientists also plan to apply this technology to cows to make them produce more milk, and plan to improve them so that they can replace the genes of pigs and reproduce some of their internal organs that can be used for human organ transplantation. animal. (full text)