Food & Beverage News: Top Stories - India achieves significant success in cloning

India is fast logging into the clone age. Despite being a late entrant into the elite group of nations such as the US, the UK, China and South Korea, which are in the forefront of animal cloning efforts, India has recently achieved significant successes. The country's scientists have succeeded in cloning a buffalo calf and produced transgenic Rohu fish, the most consumed variety in the country. Further research efforts are underway to clone Pashmina goat, other milch animals, rabbit and, on a more ambitious note, the now extinct Asiatic cheetah.

The buffalo clone, named Garima, was presented to the world recently by the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal. This was the third attempt, the first one having lived only a few days, and the second one aborted (The story was first reported by F & B News).

Bolstered by this success, NDRI scientists are now gung ho on cloning Pashmina goat as well. They are partnering with scientists from Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in the Rs 9-crore World Bank-aided project. The scientists will use small tissues from the ear of the goats to produce the clone.

Down south, it is the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), which is leading the foray. CCMB scientists have displayed their skills by genetically modifying the popular Rahu fish. Here again, the mandate has been to boost production by planting a synthesised gene into the fish genome. Once planted, this gene helps enhance the production of a growth hormone that makes the fish grow faster and bigger in size.

In the past too, CCMB had tasted success with the Laboratory for Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONSEs) as its core facility for wildlife management. Scientists have worked on developing assisted reproductive technologies to induce pregnancy in endangered animals by artificial inseminastion. The first success came in the form of a spotted deer. Next in line was a Black Buck, which led to the birth of a live fawn of this endangered species.

Equally exciting are the cloning efforts on the Asiatic cheetah. Here the CCMB scientists plan to draw and create cell lines from the genetic material taken out from live Asiatic cheetah cells. These cell lines would then be infused into the eggs of a leopard, whose hereditary material has already have been stripped. In scientific parlance, remove the nucleus from the egg and replace it with the nucleus from the skin cells of the cheetah. The transgenic embryo then would be inserted into the receptive womb of a leopard. Cloning technique has the potential to save many endangered species of domestic and wild animals on the verge of extinction.

(Abridged from an article by Sudhir Chowdhary & B V Mahalaxmi in The Financial Express)