Fifteen years ago today, Dolly the Sheep was born. Now stuffed and on display at the Edinburgh Museum, Dolly began her life at the Roslin Institute as a cell from a sheep donor’s mammary gland, hence the name. You might have heard of the famously busty country western singer Dolly Parton? If not, then I don’t want to know you (actually I don’t know any of you). Anyway, Dolly became the first mammal to be cloned using the process of nuclear transfer. She died at the age of six, euthanised because of a progressive lung disease. Usually there’s a life expectancy of around 11 to 12 years in sheep. Some scientists think her cloning had nothing to do with her early death as lung cancer is a fairly common disease in sheep, especially of those kept inside. However, some speculate that she could have been born with a genetic age of six years, the same age as the sheep from which she was cloned.
R.I.P. Dolls. We miss you – this is our future by the way. Shudder.
