56 Fun Facts About Cloning

Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned from what?

An adult body cell: scientists had believed a specialised adult cell kept only the instructions for its own job, so cloning from one seemed impossible.

From which part of the donor sheep's body was Dolly's cell taken?

The udder: because the cell came from a mammary gland, the lamb was named after Dolly Parton.

In Jurassic Park, where do scientists find the dinosaur DNA they use for cloning?

In insects trapped in amber: in reality, a study of dated fossil bones found DNA has a half-life of about 521 years, far too short to survive from the dinosaur age.

At which research institute was Dolly the sheep cloned?

Roslin Institute: cloning was the next step in its research into genetically modified livestock that could pass new traits to their offspring.

In Star Wars, the Republic's army of clone troopers was grown from which bounty hunter's DNA?

Jango Fett: as part of the deal, he kept one unaltered clone to raise as his son, Boba Fett.

Which Kazuo Ishiguro novel follows three friends from an English boarding school who turn out to be clones?

Never Let Me Go: the students eventually learn they were created to donate their vital organs once they reach adulthood.

Which US agency ruled food from cloned animals safe?

FDA: livestock are cloned to copy animals with prized traits, such as cows with high milk production.

Who led the team that cloned Dolly?

Ian Wilmut: he had hired Keith Campbell, whose knowledge of the cell cycle proved instrumental in getting the cloning technique to work.

Dolly was the only survivor of how many cloning attempts?

Hundreds: to make it work, the team first forced the donor cells into a dormant phase so the eggs would accept their nuclei.

What fused the cells that made Dolly?

Electricity: one ewe gave the cell, another the egg and a third carried the embryo, which is why Dolly is said to have had three mothers.

Which condition made Dolly the sheep walk stiffly?

Arthritis: it fuelled suspicion that clones age early.

What condition led to Dolly the sheep being euthanised?

A progressive lung disease: scientists linked it to a virus-caused cancer common in sheep kept indoors, which had killed others in her flock, not to cloning.

Which finding fuelled speculation that Dolly had been born genetically 'old'?

Her short telomeres: they reflected her six-year-old donor's age and time in lab culture, because nuclear transfer does not restore telomere length.

Where is Dolly's preserved body displayed?

National Museum of Scotland: after she was put down, her creators donated her preserved body, and she has been on display there since 2003.

What did scientists find when they examined 13 elderly cloned sheep, including four from Dolly's cell line?

No obvious ill effects: despite fears raised by Dolly's early death, the aged clones had normal blood sugar and blood pressure.

Why are clones like Dolly not perfect genetic copies of the nucleus donor?

The egg keeps its own mitochondrial DNA: scientists expected a mix from both cells, but Dolly's came entirely from the egg.

In The 6th Day, which action star plays a man who comes home to find a clone has replaced him?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: his character is cloned by accident in a future where cloned pets are sold but human cloning is illegal.

The word clone derives from the Ancient Greek word for what?

Twig: the word first named groups of plants grown from cuttings of one original, long before it was applied to copying animals.

What is parthenogenesis?

Reproduction by a female without a mate: in many bees, wasps and ants, eggs that develop without fertilisation become males.

Which large lizard is among the animals known to reproduce by parthenogenesis?

Komodo dragon: young from these births are always male, which could reduce genetic diversity in zoo breeding.

How do identical twins, nature's own clones, form?

A fertilised egg splits: labs mimic this by splitting early embryos, which is how the cloned rhesus monkey Tetra was made.

Which German embryologist split salamander embryos with a loop of baby hair, an early step toward cloning?

Hans Spemann: his experiments showed that half of an early embryo could still grow into a whole animal.

Robert Briggs and Thomas King cloned which animal in 1952?

Northern leopard frog: Briggs and King moved nuclei from early embryo cells into emptied frog eggs and grew tadpoles, a first step toward cloning animals.

Whose frog-egg experiments earned a share of the 2012 Nobel Prize with Shinya Yamanaka?

John Gurdon: he showed a mature cell's nucleus still holds everything needed to make a tadpole, overturning the belief that specialisation is permanent.

In which country was the first fish cloned?

China: Tong Dizhou's team wanted to learn whether a cell's nucleus or its cytoplasm controls an animal's traits.

In Multiplicity, which actor plays a busy builder who has himself cloned to find more time for his family?

Michael Keaton: he plays Doug and every copy of him, and each clone develops a different personality.

What was the name of the first cloned cat, born in December 2001?

CC: short for Copy Cat, though her coat pattern was not a carbon copy of her donor's.

Why did the first cloned cat's coat look different from her calico genetic donor's?

X-inactivation and epigenetic reprogramming: which X chromosome is switched off in each cell seems random, and that decides where a calico's colours fall.

Snuppy, the first cloned dog, was which breed?

Afghan Hound: he was cloned from another Afghan's skin cells, and later DNA tests confirmed he matched that donor, not his surrogate.

Why did dog cloning lag behind sheep?

Eggs mature poorly in labs: Snuppy's team got around it by collecting eggs that had already matured inside dogs.

Which magazine named Snuppy its 'Most Amazing Invention' of 2005?

Time: within weeks the magazine was asking whether Snuppy was real, as his creator's stem cell research was exposed as faked; DNA tests later confirmed he was.

Which cloning scientist faked papers claiming stem cells from cloned human embryos?

Hwang Woo-suk: he was later convicted of embezzling research funds and illegally buying human eggs, and received a suspended prison sentence.

Idaho Gem, the first cloned member of the horse family, was what kind of animal?

Mule: because mules are almost always sterile, he was also the first clone of an animal that cannot normally reproduce.

Prometea, the first cloned horse, was born in 2003 in a laboratory in which country?

Italy: Prometea was carried to term by the very mare whose skin cells she was cloned from, so she is her mother's identical twin.

Which endangered animal, carried by a domestic cow, became the first endangered species to be cloned, in 2001?

Gaur: its cells were fused with cow eggs, showing that another species could stand in for an endangered animal's own eggs and womb.

Why is the Pyrenean ibex called the only animal to have gone extinct twice?

Its 2003 clone died minutes after birth: the newborn, made from skin cells of the last living female, had defects in its lungs.

In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan discovers a secret clone army being grown on which ocean planet?

Kamino: its cloners said the army had been ordered on behalf of the Jedi, yet the Jedi knew nothing of it.

What kind of animal were Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua?

Crab-eating macaques: the team wanted genetically identical monkeys to use as research models for human diseases with a genetic basis.

Elizabeth Ann, cloned in 2020, belongs to which endangered species?

Black-footed ferret: Antonia, a later clone of the same donor, had kits in 2024, passing on genes from a ferret that died with no descendants.

Which actor plays a lone lunar miner who meets a younger clone of himself in the 2009 film Moon?

Sam Rockwell: his miner is nearly done with a three-year shift when he meets the clone, and must solve the mystery before the company's crew arrives.

Which company claimed in December 2002 that it had produced a cloned baby named Eve?

Clonaid: it promised independent DNA tests to prove Eve was a clone, but never presented the mother, the child or any proof.

Which UFO religion sees cloning as the first step to immortality?

Raëlism: its founder, former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, teaches that extraterrestrials created life on Earth through genetic engineering.

Which singer cloned a late dog named Samantha and ended up with two new puppies?

Barbra Streisand: she said she was still waiting to see whether the clones would have Samantha's brown eyes and her seriousness.

Which dystopian novel features 'Bokanovsky's Process', an early fictional cloning method?

Brave New World: its hatcheries use the process to turn one egg into as many as 96 identical people, a major instrument of social stability.

In The Boys from Brazil, Josef Mengele uses cloning to create copies of whom?

Adolf Hitler: Mengele's agents set out to murder 94 fathers around the world, whose adopted sons turn out to be the clones.

Woody Allen's Sleeper parodies cloning with an attempt to clone a dictator from what?

His nose: posing as doctors, Miles and Luna are put in charge of the cloning, and Miles steals the nose instead.

Which 2013 TV series follows con artist Sarah Manning after she learns she is one of many clones?

Orphan Black: Tatiana Maslany played Sarah and all of the other clones herself.

Which trio of crops is commonly propagated as clones rather than grown from seed?

Grapes, potatoes and bananas: growers plant cuttings, tuber buds or shoots taken from one original plant, so each new plant is a clone.

What is the name for making embryos to harvest stem cells rather than a whole organism?

Therapeutic cloning: the embryo's stem cells would share the patient's DNA, so tissue grown from them could replace the patient's own diseased tissue.

Which company was said to have cloned about 700 dogs for their owners by 2015?

Sooam Biotech: at about $100,000 per dog, the South Korean lab drew grieving pet owners from as far away as Britain and Japan.

What did Colossal Biosciences claim to have revived in 2024 by cloning and gene editing?

The dire wolf: Colossal edited 14 genes in grey wolf cells to add 20 dire wolf traits, then cloned the pups from those cells.

Which zoo's 'Frozen Zoo' stores tissue from the world's rarest species for conservation cloning?

San Diego Zoo: cells its Frozen Zoo banked decades ago have since been used to clone endangered animals.

Which endangered species is Ollie, a clone born in 2023 from cells frozen in 1980?

Przewalski's horse: Ollie and his genetic twin Kurt were cloned to restore genetic variation lost from the living population.

Which English playwright's 2002 play A Number pits a father against his cloned sons?

Caryl Churchill: the father had a son cloned to get a second chance at parenting, and gets far more copies than he bargained for.

In Doctor Who, the cloned warrior race the Sontarans have a weak spot called what?

The probic vent: it is a small socket at the back of the neck, and a single well-aimed blow there can kill a Sontaran.

In molecular cloning, which enzyme joins a DNA fragment into a vector?

DNA ligase: in living cells it seals nicks and repairs damaged DNA, and labs borrow it to stitch DNA fragments into vectors.