Harry is a U.K.-based staff writer at Live Science. He studied Marine Biology at the University of Exeter (Penryn campus) and after graduating started his own blog site 'Marine Madness,' which he continues to run with other ocean enthusiasts. He is also interested in evolution, climate change, robots, space exploration, environmental conservation and anything that's been fossilized. When not at work he can be found watching sci-fi films, playing old Pokemon games or running (probably slower than he'd like).
A Chinese pet-cloning company has announced the birth of the world's first cloned Arctic wolf , which was carried to term by an unlikely surrogate mother — a beagle.
Maya was cloned using DNA collected from a fully grown Arctic wolf, also named Maya, that died in captivity at Harbin Polarland, a wildlife park in northeast China. The original Maya, who was born in Canada before being shipped to China in 2006, died due to old age in early 2021, according to Global Times.
Maya now lives with her surrogate mother at a Sinogene lab in Xuzhou, eastern China, but the wolf pup will eventually be transferred to Harbin Polarland to live with other Arctic wolves. However, the park's keepers believe she will have to be slowly introduced to the rest of the pack because of her isolated upbringing, according to Global Times.
In 2019, Sinogene was also involved with a project that produced six identical German shepherd clones, which were then inducted into the Beijing police force, according to CBS News . The main benefit of cloning endangered species is that it maintains the amount of genetic diversity within a species, Novak said. If the clones can reproduce with other non-cloned individuals, this gives threatened species a fighting chance to adapt to the selection pressures that are driving them towards extinction, he added.
One of the main issues is that not all animals can be successfully cloned yet. To date, only mammals, fish, amphibians and a single insect species have been cloned using SCNT, Novak said. For birds, reptiles and egg-laying mammals, like platypuses and echidnas, SCNT does not work because the eggs do not properly develop, he added.
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