Wisconsin-based company Infigen announced recently that it had successfully produced clones of a rare pig. More importantly, it claims to have developed advances in cloning that allow it to produce clones with just one round of embryo implantations rather than the several rounds that have been required up until now.
The pig was the last female in one of four remaining bloodlines of Gloucestershire Old Spots in North America. Robyn Metcalfe, founder of the Kelmscott Rare Breeds Foundation in Maine, had unsuccessful tried to get the animal to reproduce via natural breeding and artificial insemination.
Infigen offered its services for free to prove its technology. Pigs have been cloned perviously, but typically two or three pigs are implanted with hundreds of embryos in order to achieve a single successful pregnancy.
Infigen has been able to eliminate the need for implanting multiple animals. In February it released results showing that it had produced three successful pregnancies from three implantations in pigs, and in this case managed to produce a successful pregnancy from a single implantation.
As cloning researcher Randall Prather told NewScientist.Com, “Sounds like they got it working pretty well.”
Source:
Rare pig cloned in single cycle. Sylvia Pagan Westphal, NewScientist.Com, April 23, 2002.
Rare pig breed cloned. The BBC, April 24, 2002.