GoKawiilLook back at the thirty years of advances since the birth of Dolly the sheep. Plus, what the science says about staving off dementia and a call to preserve the Hubble space telescope.
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The team at the Roslin Institute was overwhelmed with media requests about Dolly.Credit: Colin McPherson/Corbis/Getty
Thirty years ago this week, a sheep named Dolly was born — the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. “It was absolutely bonkers,” recalls biotech researcher Bruce Whitelaw. “We weren’t ready for that.” Reproductive cloning is now being used to create cattle with no horns, pigs with more transplant-friendly organs and copies of cherished pets.
But fears of cloned humans have, so far, been unfounded, notes a Nature editorial. “The success rate is too low to consider the method in humans, and the risk of abnormalities resulting from the process is too high.” Dolly’s greatest legacy, it suggests, could have been a better system for preparing for the societal impact of genetic and reproductive technologies — a promise that is yet unfulfilled.
Metro | 5 min read & Nature Editorial | 7 min read
Reference: Nature paper (from 1997)
The 11 British ships that brought the first European colonizers to Australia in 1788 also brought smallpox, suggests new research — and its impact was enormous. Researchers modelled the spread of the disease and found that the outbreak originated with the ‘First Fleet’ — perhaps from material brought to inoculate against the disease. A second modelling study suggests that the continent might have been home to more than 2.5 million people at the time — meaning that the colonial invasion led to the deaths of almost 2.4 million people.
Science | 10 min read
Reference: Research Square preprint 1 & Research Square preprint 2 (not peer reviewed)
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