Efforts on at CDFD to perfect cloning methods

HYDERABAD: The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) here is in the process of perfecting cloning techniques.
To perfect cloning techniques, scientists are looking for molecules - perhaps of the mother - to reorganise the DNA, so as to make the technique more efficient. "At the CDFD, we are looking for these molecules which will help to reprogramme and organise the DNA, so as to make the clones more healthy," CDFD scientist Sanjeev Khosla told The Times of India on Friday.
When clones are born, they have numerous abnormalities.One of them is that the young ones are extremely large in size. Though Dolly, the cloned sheep, was of a normal size, Khosla said, she was only one of the many cloned sheep. "We do not know how others were," he pointed out. Abnormal large size is seen in most of the mice, pigs, sheep and other cloned animals.
Dolly has been diagnosed with arthritis. One of the reasons for this could be defects in cloning or due to other reasons.
"The fact remains that there are numerous defects when it comes to cloning and the art of preparing an organism is still with God himself," Khosla said.
One of the main reasons for numerous abnormalities in the cloned offspring is that the mother cell - oocyte - has to identify the nucleus of a somatic cell, rather than a sperm. It has to reprogramme and produce an offspring. For a somatic cell to process information it needs a high degree of reprogramming.
Reprogramming in humans, rats, pigs and other mammals is still poorly understood by scientists, he explained.
This was one of the reasons that cloning in mammals is only a hit and trial method and unless scientists understand the language of cells, it would be difficult to produce a perfect clone, Khosla said.