HAND MADE CLONING

…DEVELOPED TO PERFECTION

HAND MADE CLONING: The technique of hand cloning Alzheimer’s pigs has been developed into a fine art by a Hungarian professor who works at the Danish research institution DIAS. The technique is cheap and simple – and far more certain not to fail.

The Alzheimer’s project with cloned pigs as test animals is set to break new ground primarily due to a cloning technique developed in the Section of Reproductive Biology in the Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS) in Foulum. The cloning technique, developed by Professor Gábor Vajta who works in Foulum, is in a literal sense a mass production of test animals.

Healthy pregnancies
“It is a relatively simple method which is carried out by hand using an ordinary microscope,” says Professor Vajta. “So far it has been necessary to use an expensive and inaccurate tool – known as a micro manipulator – when one clones an egg. It is a complicated and costly process, and the result is far less reliable for achieving healthy pregnancies. My method, simply called Hand Made Cloning, we have gradually developed to perfection.” The method involves cutting eggs from sows’ ovaries into two halves under an ordinary microscope. The halves with cell nuclei are discarded, leaving half, empty eggs. A cell from the mother sow which Gábor Vajta wants to clone is first brought together with one empty half, then another. The eggs are then put into an incubator where they develop into small cell lumps, which then are implanted into the sow’s uterus.

Gábor Vajta developed the technique of hand made cloning

Only for research
“Using my method has many advantages compared to the traditional one,” says Vajta. “It does not require expensive and advanced equipment, and the technique can be learned very quickly. But the most important thing is that the quality of the cloned and genetically engineered cell lumps, called blastocysts, give far more reliable pregnancies that with the traditional method, where up to 90% end in abortions.”

Until around 10 years ago, scientists at Danish research institutes were held in great respect for their work on cloning animals: it was Danish research scientists who cloned the world’s first calf. But Danish legislation then banned cloning experiments, and that hampered research. A change of the law in 2005 has once again opened the way for animal cloning for research purposes.

“We do not use cloning to make identical copies for instance to breed more productive livestock. We use cloning primarily to create transgenetic animals with human diseases, which enables research work to be conducted more accurately than hitherto.”