Large Scale Cattle Clone in China

The largest scale animal cloning research project in China at present-somatic cell cattle cloning project, passed the authentication by experts on 21 November,2003 in Northwest Xinjiang Autonmous Region.

The Project titled "Studies on and Production of Fibroblast Somatic Cell Cloning in Cattle" was conducted from March to October 2002 by Xinjiang Gold Cattle Bio.Inc, in cooperation with the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and an Australian company. A total of 57 cattle were found pregnant in 479 recipients. Finally, 31 calves were born and 12 are still alive.

The microsatellite analysis of these cloned live calves confirmed that the length and the quantity of the 12 calves' gene fragments were the same as the donor cattle's but unrelated with the recipients.

Gold "Bullet" for Gene Study Prepared by Institute of Chemistry

In genetic engineering research a special device named Gene Gun has been used by the biological scientists. The principle of this device is that the tiny metallic pellets such as tungsten carrying snippets of a pathogen's DNA under high pressure penetrate into the cell skin. The DNA forces the cell to produce pathogen proteins, triggering the immune system. However, to prepare gold particle "bullet" with diameter around narrow size micrometer is not an easy job, otherwise such bullet should be rough. Only a few countries now produce such "bullet".

Recently, researchers in Lab of Colloid and Surfaces of Institute of Chemistry, CAS, successfully prepared the gold bullet with diameter around 1.0 micrometer and has used it in the gene gun experiment conducted in the Institute of Genetic and Developmental Biology, CAS. It has been shown that the result is good, compatible with the import gold pullet, while the price of the "bullet" is only 1/20 of the imported one.