First buffalo cloned,dies week later

Scientists at the National Dairy Research Institute,Karnal...

Scientists at the National Dairy Research Institute NDRI,Karnal Haryana,on Thursday claimed to have successfully modified the conventional cloning technique used during the birth of worlds first cloned sheep Dolly. The scientists claimed to have developed a cheaper Hand-guided Cloning Technique and produced worlds first cloned buffalo on February 6.

However,the cloned buffalo died on Wednesday,less than a week after it was born,due to an infection caused by the water in its lungs found at the time of delivery.

We have produced the worlds first cloned buffalo here using Hand-guided Cloning Technique which is a cheaper and advanced modification over the conventional cloning method, Dr A K Srivastava,director,NDRI told The Indian Express over telephone from Karnal. Explaining the buffalos death,he said,Water was found in the lungs of the buffalo at the time of its delivery. Initially,the buffalo responded positively to the medications,but the infections got serious,leading to its death on Wednesday. Srivastava said the cloning experiment has been successful and informed that two more cloned buffaloes have been confirmed in the pregnancy stage.

Notwithstanding the death of the first cloned buffalo after its birth,the entire experiment has been successful. In fact,we have two more confirmed pregnancies of cloned buffaloes. These two calves are slated to born sometime in May and June, informed Srivastava. He claimed that the scientists from NDRI have cloned many more buffaloes,but refrained from divulging the numbers saying that they still needed to confirm the pregnancies.

Srivastava said the NDRI team behind the experiment included S K Singla,R S Manik,M S Chauhan,P Palta,R A Shah and A George.

The oocytes egg cell were enucleated with the help of handheld fine blades. The egg cells were prepared using the oocytes isolated from abattoir ovaries which were matured in-vitro and then denuded for treatment with enzymes, he said adding,The somatic cells drawn from the ear of the donor buffalo was propagated for use as donor-nuclei. The enucleated oocytes and the donor-nuclei were electro-fused,cultured and grown to produce embroys. The embryo was then transferred to a recipient buffalo for reproduction, he said.