Scientists Create First Cloned Human Embryo

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 14:31 in Biology & Nature

Human Blastocyst A human embryo at the blastocyst stage Open i beta The process that created Dolly the sheep in 1996 has now been proven successful in humans. Scientists have made an embryonic clone of a person, using DNA from that person's skin cells. In the future, such a clone could be a source of stem cells, for super-personalized therapies made from people's own DNA. It's unlikely that this clone could develop into a human, say the scientists, a team of biologists from the U.S. and Thailand. The team plans to publish a paper in the future detailing why not, Nature reported. Previously, the team conducted this entire process, including a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, in monkeys. Those monkey embryo clones always died before they could grow into adult monkeys. "While nuclear transfer breakthroughs often lead to a public discussion about the ethics of human cloning, this is not our focus,...

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