Researchers in France recently announced they had successfully cloned rabbits. Their report, published in the Nature Biotechnology, describes how the researchers used cells from an adult rabbit to produce several cloned rabbits.
Like other cloned animals, this procedure required hundreds of cloned embryos to produce six live births. Two of the rabbits died shortly after birth, leaving four clones that appear to be growing and reproducing normally.
Rabbits are an important research tool because they are genetically more similar to human beings than are other lab animals, such as mice, but they have a much shorter gestation period than larger mammals such as sheep or cows.
“The advantage is that rabbits reproduce so quickly,” Dr. Jean-Paul Renard told The BBC. “The pregnancy lasts one month, then it takes four months to sexual maturity…” The average gestation period for a rabbit is only 31 days, producing an average litter size of 8.
Combined with the cloning technique, this would allow researchers to create genetically modified rabbits for medical research purposes very quickly.
For example, one of the areas that the French researchers are already working on is creating a rabbit model for cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis is caused by a defect on a gene that happens to be very similar between human beings and rabbits. The ability to produce a large number of rabbits with a similar defect on this gene could lead to a much better animal model for cystic fibrosis and improved progress on understanding and treating the disease.
Rabbits are also used in heart disease as well as the production of monoclonal antibodies (which animal rights activists like to pretend are non-animal alternatives to research). The rabbit’s immune system is similar to human beings, and studies of how rabbits cope with organ transplants has yielded important information on preventing organ transplant rejection in human beings.
In fact, as The Washington Post noted, cloning technology itself rests in part upon advances in the understanding of reproduction obtained through extensive research in rabbits.
Sources:
Rabbits join the cloning club. The BBC, March 29, 2002.
A big hop forward: Rabbits cloned; Research promise seen in second lab animal to be replicated. David Brown, Washington Post, March 30, 2002.
These Easter bunnies are clones. Roger Highfield, Daily Telegraph (London), March 30, 2002.