Mother�s Day is coming up, and world�s first cloned animal will be among those feted. Dolly the sheep is now the proud mother of a 6.7-pound bouncing baby ewe.
Scientists at the Roslin Institute reported that Bonnie was born at 4 am on 13 April. Unlike Dolly, who was cloned from an adult ewe cell in July 1996, Bonnie was conceived naturally. Roslin researchers mated Dolly with a Welsh mountain ram late last year to see if she could breed normally. The fact that the pregnancy went to term and that delivery was normal is proof that the cloned sheep can carry out normal animal functions.
"Despite Dolly's unusual origins, the birth of her first lamb confirms that she is able to breed normally and produce healthy offspring," said Roslin director Grahame Bulfield in a statement. And that progeny is thriving. In her first week of life, Bonnie has put on 2.2 pounds and has bonded well with her mother.
News of and about Dolly has generated much fanfare since the announcement of her arrival on terra firma last year. In the months since, chief Dolly researcher Ian Wilmut has launched an effort to get governments and societies to discuss the ethics and issues surrounding the cloning of animals and humans. At the same time, Wilmut and his colleagues have worked on the scientific paper discussing Dolly�s creation and entertained critiques of their research, some of which has sounded a skeptical chord on whether Dolly truly is a clone.
It also kicked off a year of incredible developments regarding egg, cell, and embryonic manipulation, including the creation of Polly, the first transgenic sheep.
The birth of Bonnie marks an important milestone for the Roslin researchers, who see the development as key to the commercialization of the nuclear transfer technique that produced Dolly. Cloned and transgenic animals may be bred naturally to expand the size of flocks or herds.
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Stratospheric launch has no lift: SkyStation International officials had their feet firmly on the ground when they announced a launch on Thursday �- the formation of its global industrial team. The developer of the sky-high Internet project said it added Aerospatiale SNI of France for design and development of a Phase B portion of the program.
The French aerospace company joins an international group that includes Italy�s Alenia Spazio/Finmeccanica and NASA�s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a much ballyhooed effort to launch a network of communications payloads tethered to helium-filled dirigibles. The telcommunications system for each station will reportedly provide T-1 and E-1 wireless communications directly to subscribers from a stationery platform situated about 13 miles above Earth.
The company, which is headed by former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, has been busily signing on international partners and getting clearance for its system from the International Telecommunications Union. But it has yet to launch so much as a test unit, and a trial run originally scheduled for last October in the New Mexico desert has been postponed several times and is not scheduled at this time, said a company spokeswoman.
"We held off on testing until we had this industrial team together �- better they make the decisions about it. [The test] will be scheduled soon, I hope, but I can�t project it," said the spokeswoman.
Whatever the date, the company still maintains it will launch its system in 2001.
