The world's first cloned buffalo would soon be born as researchers at Mahidol University had managed to find a way to clone them using the ovum of cows, local newspaper Nation reported Friday.
The researcher, Jamnien Saikhun, and his advisor, Kanok Pawasuthipaisit, was quoted as saying that it was expected that the world will see its first cloned buffalo in about seven months.
According to them, the stem cells were taken from cows aged from 40 days to more than three years. The embryos were then implanted into nine surrogate buffaloes.
There were no miscarriages in the first three months, they said.
The noticeable breakthrough of the unprecedented buffalo is thecloning method that involves the use of cow ovum obtained from slaughterhouses, which was devised by Jamnien who has experience with test tube cows and embryo implanting.
In the first step, the ovum is selected for quality and fertilized before the nucleus containing cow genetic information is sucked out. The cow nucleus is then replaced with the buffalo nucleus and incubated for a week before the embryo is transferred to a surrogate buffalo.
Using cow ovum does not cause any problems concerning the genetics of the buffalo because researchers suck out the nucleus containing the genetic blueprint of the cow, Jamnien explained, adding that only the cytoplasm remains, and the cow's cytoplasm has no genetic information that could contaminate the cloning process and cause problems.
The embryo will definitely be that of a buffalo, he said.
( April 27, 2002)
