Category Archives: Cloning

With global warming, economic uncertainty and the COVID-19 pandemic, the world feels like its in a precarious place as we head into the 2020s. But Russia may have a plan to stay on top by cloning an army of 3,000 year old super soldiers. The idea originates with Russia Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who proposed it at a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society last month.

Shoigu learned of the discovery of the frozen corpses of Scythian warriors in Siberia, which might be the perfect material for his legion of genetic monstrosities. The Scythians existed between the 9th and 2nd centuries BC and were famed for their combat skills and considered masters of horseback combat, crack archers and pioneers in using guerrilla tactics to undermine their enemies. Herodotus referred to them as being fed from horse blood, contributing to their terrifying reputation.

Shoigu raised the possibility of using their DNA, saying:

We would like very much to find the organic matter and I believe you understand what would follow that. It would be possible to make something of it, if not Dolly the Sheep. In general, it will be very interesting.

Now, there are a couple of flaws in this Metal Gear Solidass plan. First up is that we havent officially cloned any humans at all yet, let alone from DNA locked in permafrost for thousands of years. Secondly, you cant just toss a bunch of DNA into a cloning machine and have a trained warrior pop out the other end if you wanted a Scythian soldier youd have to raise them in a Scythian society. And even if you could do any of that, is an expert mounted rider with a bow really such a hot commodity in 21st century warfare?

Shoigus scheme does have one big upside to it, though itd be really cool. So, based on that alone, I say they pour as many resources as they need into this ancient super soldier program. Of course, this would leave the US with an ancient super soldier gap, so lets bring back some Greek Spartans and let them go all 300 against the Russian Scythians. Ill make the popcorn.

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Russias Considering Cloning An Army Of 3,000 Year Old Super Soldiers - We Got This Covered

Posted on May 12, 2021 in Science

Another wild week of news on Planet Earth, ranging from Russia cloning an ancient warrior army to the scary prospect of fossilized cities to the amazing story of the Apollo 14 Rock.

Elon Musk Is Maybe, Actually, Strangely, Going To Do This Mars Thing, reports Marina Koren for The Atlantic Take this path all the way to Boca Chica, past the solar-panel farms and storage sheds, past the little street that used to be called Joanna Street until Musk renamed it Rocket Road, and you end up on the beach, with sky and sea stretching out before you. Its a beautiful view on any day, and maybe, one day, itll be someones last look at Earth.

Is war in space inevitable?- Space.com asked experts about the ongoing militarization of space. What conditions could lead to clashes in space? Is such a situation a given, or can conflicts be short-circuited ahead of time? Could nations slip into off-planet muscle-flexing, quarreling and actual warfighting in space that might spark confrontation here on terra firma?

Bye-Bye, Bennu: NASA Heads Back to Earth With Asteroid Stash in Tow, reports The New York Times. The OSIRIS-REX mission will spend two years cruising home with space rock samples that could unlock secrets of the early solar system.

Alien plants: The search for photosynthesis on other worlds, reports New Scientist. Looking for signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres is fraught with uncertainty. But now that we can detect polarised light reflected directly off other worlds, we could spot unmistakable evidence of photosynthesis.

The Farthest Spacecraft from Earth Picks Up an Unexpected New Signal, reports Becky Ferreira for Motherboard Science. Voyager 1 has likely made the first continuous measurement of the density of matter in interstellar space.

How Cities Will Fossilize, reports David Farrier for The BBC If cities have a geological character, it begs the question of what they will leave behind in the stratigraphy of the 21st Century. Fossils are a kind of planetary memory of the shapes the world once wore. Just as the landscapes of the deep past are not forgotten, how will the rock record of the deep future remember Shanghai, New York and other great cities?

DNAs Histone Spools Hint at How Complex Cells Evolvedreports Quanta. New work shows that histones, long treated as boring spools for DNA, sit at the center of the origin story of eukaryotes and continue to play important roles in evolution and disease.

Russia Is Going to Try to Clone an Army of 3,000-Year-Old Scythian Warriors, reports Popular Mechanics When you hold a job like Defense Minister of Russia, you presumably have to be bold and think outside the box to protect your country from enemy advances. And with his latest strategic ideacloning an entire army of ancient warriorsSergei Shoigu is certainly taking a big swing. Shoigu, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested using the DNA of 3,000-year-old Scythian warriors to potentially bring them back to life.

The Apollo Rock Half-a-Billion Years Before the Appearance of Life an Asteroid Blasted a Piece of Earth to the Moon, reports The Daily Galaxy. The absence of a lunar atmosphere, writes Loeb in The Moon as a Fishing Net for Extraterrestrial Life, guarantees that these messengers would reach the lunar surface without burning up. In addition, the geological inactivity of the moon implies that the record deposited on its surface will be preserved and not mixed with the deep lunar interior. Serving as a natural mailbox, the lunar surface collected all impacting objects during the past few billions of years. Most of this mail comes from within the solar system.

CIAs hunt for Osama bin Laden fueled vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan, reports New Scientist.

Invisible Monsters Supermassive Black Holes Roam the Milky Way, reports The Daily Galaxy. It is extremely unlikely that any wandering supermassive black hole will come close enough to our Sun to have any impact on our solar system, said lead author Michael Tremmel, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. We estimate that a close approach of one of these wanderers that is able to affect our solar system should occur every 100 billion years or so, or nearly 10 times the age of the universe.

Giant sea lizard fossil shows diversity of life before asteroid hit, reports the University of Bath. he high diversity of the fauna shows how mosasaurs, giant marine lizards related to snakes and Komodo dragons, thrived in the final million years of the Cretaceous period before they, and most of all species on Earth, were wiped out by the impact of a giant asteroid 66 million years ago.

How planets form controls elements essential for life Rice University scientists attribute Earths nitrogen to rapid growth of moon- to Mars-sized bodies.

Marco Rubio is Taking UFOs Seriously and He Thinks You Should Too Dozens of men and women we have entrusted with the defense of our country are telling us about encounters with unidentified aircraft with capabilities we do not fully understand, Rubio said in exclusive comments ahead of a 60 Minutes interview that will air this weekend. We cannot allow the stigma of UFOs to keep us from seriously investigating these encounters.

Humans Have Been Sharing Food With Animals for Centuries. Why Is That? Researchers want to learn more about the connections between humans and the feeding of birds, beasts and other fauna.

Paralyzed man uses mindwriting brain computer to compose sentences, reports The Guardian. Man, known as T5, was able to write 18 words a minute with more than 94% accuracy on individual letters.

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Planet Earth Report Fossilized Cities of the Future to Russia Cloning an Army of 3,000-Year-Old Scythian War - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries...

Russian Geographical Society

When you hold a job like Defense Minister of Russia, you presumably have to be bold and think outside the box to protect your country from enemy advances. And with his latest strategic ideacloning an entire army of ancient warriorsSergei Shoigu is certainly taking a big swing.

In an online session of the Russian Geographical Society last month, Shoigu, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested using the DNA of 3,000-year-old Scythian warriors to potentially bring them back to life. Yes, really.

First, some background: The Scythian people, who originally came from modern-day Iran, were nomads who traveled around Eurasia between the 9th and 2nd centuries B.C., building a powerful empire that endured for several centuries before finally being phased out by competitors. Two decades ago, archaeologists uncovered the well-preserved remains of the soldiers in a kurgan, or burial mound, in the Tuva region of Siberia.

Because of Tuvas position in southern Siberia, much of it is permafrost, meaning a form of soil or turf that always remains frozen. Its here where the Scythian warrior saga grows complex, because the frozen soil preserves biological matter better than other kinds of ground. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu knows this better than anyone, because hes from Tuva.

Of course, we would like very much to find the organic matter and I believe you understand what would follow that, Shoigu told the Russian Geographical Society. It would be possible to make something of it, if not Dolly the Sheep. In general, it will be very interesting.

Shoigu subtly suggested going through some kind of human cloning process. But is that even possible?

To date, no one has cloned a human being. But scientists have successfully executed the therapeutic cloning of individual kinds of cells and other specific gene-editing work, and of course, there are high-profile examples of cloning pretty complex animals. Earlier this year, for example, scientists cloned an endangered U.S. species for the first time: a black-footed ferret whose donor has been dead for more than 30 years.

So, why are humans still off the menu?

Blame a technical problem with the most common form of cloning, which is called nuclear transfer. In this process, a somatic cell (like a skin or organ cell, with a specific established purpose in the body) has its nucleus carefully lifted out, and this nucleus is deposited in an oocyte, or egg cell, with its nucleus carefully removed. Its like a blank template waiting to have a new nucleus swapped in.

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From a technical perspective, cloning humans and other primates is more difficult than in other mammals, the National Institutes of Healths (NIH) National Human Genome Research Institute says on its website:

You might remember spindle proteins from your mitosis diagrams back in high school biology. And while theres a relatively easy way around this problem, its almost moot when cloning humans is considered extremely taboo in most of the world. In some places, its also explicitly illegal.

We would like very much to find the organic matter and I believe you understand what would follow that.

Curiously, the U.S. hasnt banned the gene editing of embryos. But the NIH doesnt fund research on the practice, and places like in-vitro clinics arent allowed to do any non-U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved manipulation of embryos under any circumstances.

That example starts to illustrate why the problem is so complexbecause a lot of cutting-edge genetic medicine is walking right up to the line without crossing it. Making laws that address full human embryo cloning, then, requires a jigsaw puzzle of careful language that doesnt rule out these kinds of therapeutic cloning.

HandoutGetty Images

But lets say Russia ignores all legality in favor of Shoigus big plans. In that case, scientists would have to develop a way to lift out the human nucleus without damaging the cell beyond repair.

Scientists have cloned certain monkeys, so primates are at least hypothetically still in the mix, despite the spindle proteins. But the success rate even for non-primate clones is already very lowit took Dolly the sheeps research team 277 attempts to get a viable embryo.

And what if all of that went perfectly? Well, the Scythians were powerful warriors and gifted horsemen, but scientistsor the Kremlinmust carefully monitor a cloned baby version of a deceased adult warrior for illnesses and other prosaic childhood problems. Who will raise these children? Who will be legally responsible for their wellbeing?

Shoigu may envision a future race of extremely capable fighters, but ... thats at least 20 years away, with an added coin flip on nature versus nurture. After all, the Scythian warriors didnt have plumbing, let alone smartphones. This is a whole new world.

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Russia Is Going to Try to Clone an Army of 3,000-Year-Old Scythian Warriors - Popular Mechanics

The new Star Wars series, The Bad Batch, picks up a few of the threads left over from The Clone Wars and follows Clone Force 99, first introduced in that show's seventh season. Each member of 99 has some genetic variance that differentiates them from your run-of-the-mill trooper, referred to as "regs" by the Bad Batch.

It isn't a spoiler probably not even a surprise that the first episode of The Bad Batch orbits almost entirely around questions of cloning. Specifically, it asks various questions about the limits of cloning as it pertains to intentional variation. The regs are genetically designed to be compliant, identical, and interchangeable. The Bad Batch represents the other side of that coin: They are literally and figuratively defined by their differences, and therein lies their strength.

Cloning here on Earth is a little different (thankfully). Let's look at how it works and if something like the Bad Batch or regs are possible.

CLONING

In Star Wars, the Clone army is grown from genetic material provided by Jango Fett on the planet Kamino. The process by which the Clones were made is unclear, but we know they had to be made rapidly and en masse. In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Lama Su mentions 200,000 Clones have already been made with a million more on the way.

Cloning of adult individuals, as we know it in the real world, is a complex and uncertain process with specific requirements. In order to clone an adult individual, scientists take somatic cells (non-reproductive cells) and insert them into an egg cell, in a process known as nuclear transfer. The egg cell has its nucleus removed, and the somatic cell then provides the genetic material the egg will duplicate. Before any of this can happen, scientists must harvest egg cells from a member of the target species, or one genetically close enough to pass muster. Once cell replication occurs in the egg, it is implanted into a surrogate in order for the embryo to grow.

Most often, the surrogate is a member of the same species, but that isn't always the case. In 2003, scientists cloned an extinct species of ibex by taking frozen cells and implanting the embryo into a closely related surrogate. In either case, each clone requires a surrogate in order for the embryo to mature.

The image of babies grown in test tubes is purely a science fiction trope and doesn't occur in the real world at least yet. One can imagine nightmare facilities on Kamino stocked with human surrogates birthing clones.

VARIATION

The common wisdom is that clones are always identical to their genetic donor, and it makes good sense. If the cloned offspring shares the same genetic information as its ancestor, then it should be an exact copy, no?

Sort of. It all comes down to natural variation and mutation, as well as environmental impact.

Of course, even an identical clone would have differences in temperament and personality. There are certain behaviors and dispositions that are genetically influenced but so much of who we are comes down to our experiences. More than that, even appearance can be impacted by our environment and random chance.

The first cloned cat was named Cc, short for copy cat or carbon copy, and while she was genetically identical to her mother, they looked strikingly different. Coat patterns aren't necessarily determined by genes, and Cc had a different pattern from her biological mother and surrogate mother.

We must also take into account how genes express themselves. Dolly, the famed sheep who holds the honor of being the first cloned mammal, died when she was 6 years old from a respiratory infection. She was survived, however, by cloned siblings that came from the same batch of cells as Dolly herself.

Despite being genetically identical, Dolly's four sisters (Dianna, Daisy, Denise, and Debbie) exhibited some differences as they aged. In particular, two of them experienced more advanced osteoarthritis than others, and that likely came down to environmental factors.

In what is perhaps the starkest example of variation in cloning, scientists have been able to derive both male and female clones from the same genetic material. While the new, enhanced female Clone named Omega, who the Bad Batch meets in their series' opening episode, isn't confirmed to be one of Jango's Clones, it is a possibility. If you want to get into the real-life weeds, you can start here, but the gist of it isn't too hard to grasp. Using particular mouse cell lines, researchers found a natural occurrence of about 2 percent wherein the Y chromosome was lost. Using those cells to create clones results in a mix of both male and female offspring from the same genetic material.

Despite all we know in this galaxy about cloning mammals after 25 years of doing it, we still don't have anything close to Star Wars' levels of understanding. The success rate is staggeringly low and we continue to learn that there is much more variation both before and after the cloning process takes place than we originally thought. The evidence seems to suggest that any population of clones numbering in the hundreds of thousands would likely have significant genetic variation. It's probably the case that "bad batches" would be much more common than we previously supposed.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is now available on Disney+.

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Can clones have variations, as seen in Star Wars: The Bad Batch? - SYFY WIRE

Off to Tempest Keep we go, starting June 1.

Hi from Auchindoun.

Nagrand is unscarred... for now.

The Netherstorm.

Shadowmoon Valley.

It's been a while, so we forget: Is it safe to eat the mushrooms in Zangarmarsh?

After World of Warcraft successfully relaunched its original "vanilla" client in 2019, fans began wondering whether the WoW Classic universe would eventually march toward expansion packslike the unofficial WoW Vanilla community had already done. That question was answered earlier this year with news that the officialWoW Classicline would indeed adopt 2007's Burning Crusade expansion sometime in 2021.

Blizzard firmed up this plan's timeline on Thursday, confirming that WoW Classic's Burning Crusade transition will kick off on June 1. Just like with 2019's launch of WoW Classic, anyone who pays for an ongoing WoW subscription will get full access to WoW Burning Crusade at no additional cost.

Today's news also clarifies the game's march toward "Classic but newer"it understands that some players may not want to stomp toward new zones like the Outland or new character species like the Blood Elf and Draenei. If you've already been playing WoW Classic since its 2019 launch, you'll be prompted starting on May 18 to peruse a new "cloning" feature, designed to let you dosomething with your current characters. The default is to pack that character up and move it to a newer Burning Crusade server, thus deleting its pre-expansion state. You can also lock an existing character so that it isnot moved forward to a Burning Crusade server, or you can split the difference and have two versions of a beloved character: one on an older server, trapped forever in a pre-expansion bubble, and one on a newer server, ready to march alongside the ever-moving tides of darkness.

This is probably a good time to work out your preferences, along with those of your WoW Classic-loving clan, and decide how far into WoW's past you're willing to go. The fact that Burning Crusade is being propped up suggests that the Blizzard Classic team isn't done here; the folks at Blizzard Classic might also one day do the same for 2010's tremendous Cataclysm expansion(which, honestly, is where I hope they stop). Of course, if you're the kind of old-school MMO player who makes time to juggle characters on two servers for two different expansion packs of the same game, Blizzard has your back.

Unfortunately, the May 18 pre-patch launch also leaves a certain class of player crunched for time: those who are eager to roll a new Burning Crusade character, particularly in the Blood Elf and Draenei races, and want to grind that character up to level 60 in time for the formal June 1 launch. Why exactly Blizzard didn't pad this time out for at least another week or so is beyond us.

And if you're wondering what to expect from WoW Classic's tiptoe toward Burning Crusade, stroll down memory lane with Ars Technica's review of the expansion when it was only two weeks old. The existing WoW Classic client is proof positive that Blizzard Classic is leaving well-enough alone, so it's truly back to 2007 here. Hence, apply rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia (or, ahem, rose-colored goggles) as you see fitespecially as we count down the days asanother good-looking Blizzard Classic project, Diablo II Resurrected, continues its own vague march toward a release in "2021."

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World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade re-returns on June 1, requires cloning - Ars Technica

On December 10, 2020, Elizabeth Ann made history just by being born. She isnt a British royal, an American married to a British royal, a movie stars daughter, or even human for that matter. Elizabeth Ann is a ferretbut perhaps the most famous ferret of all time.

More specifically, she is the clone of a black-footed ferret named Willa who has been dead for more than 30 years. Elizabeth Anns momentous birth marks the first successful cloning of an endangered species native to North America (endangered species like the gaur, or Indian bison, and the mouflon, a wild sheep originally found in Corsica and Sardinia, have been cloned previously). If she can breed successfully, Elizabeth Ann will add valuable genetic diversity to the very small estimated population of around 600 remaining black-footed ferrets, which are all descended from just seven animals. But low genetic diversity isnt the only thing standing in the way of these ferrets making a comeback. The other major threat is disease.

Diseases are a huge problem for many endangered species, but, as the previous year has emphasized all too well, diseases that circulate in animals can also have disastrous consequences if they jump to humans. Genetic engineering of animals in the wild might offer us a way to protect not only our furry friends and feathered compadres, but ourselves as well. Although still in the early stages of research, scientists around the world are working on numerous projects to engineer animals to be resistant to diseases that can impact humans as well, including plague, Lyme disease, dengue fever, and Zika.

Black-footed ferrets like Elizabeth Ann are especially susceptible to plague. While many of us have not given much thought to plague since our medieval history class, the bacterium responsible for this deadly diseaseYersinia pestisis very much alive and well, circulating in populations of small mammals throughout North and South America, Africa, and Asia.

Its all over the western part of the United States, says Bridget Baumgartner, a molecular biologist involved in the black-footed ferret conservation project at Revive & Restore, a wildlife organization that promotes the use of biotechnology in conservation. Unlike the black-footed ferret, plague isnt native to the Americasscientists think it was introduced a little over one hundred years ago, when the first known outbreak hit San Francisco in 1900. Because its new here, the black-footed ferret succumbs so quickly that they dont ever develop an immune response to it, says Baumgartner.

Right now, conservationists have to individually vaccinate each black-footed ferret against plague. While this is effective for now, it may not be a good solution in the long-run. It just creates this problem where theyre always going to be dependent on humans for their ability to survive in the wild. And thats not at all the goal of the program, Baumgartner says.

Genetic engineering might be the key to this frankly adorable species long-term survival in the wild.

Normally, different flavors of antibodies are made by B cells through a random genetic cut-and-paste process called somatic recombination. If a B cell has antibodies that are useful (i.e. they can bind to an antigen in a vaccine or a pathogen), that B cell gets copied many times over and refined. The immune system is then able to produce lots of the correct type of antibody, helping the body fight off the infection. But sometimes the infection moves faster than the immune system can respond, spelling disaster for the unfortunate person or animal.

Genetic engineering provides a shortcut. Instead of relying on the time-consuming process of B cells multiplying, scientists can insert the genetic code to make an anti-plague antibody into an animals DNA and then instruct any cell type to make these antibodies. That way, animals dont have to wait for a vaccine to develop a large group of cells capable of making an anti-plague antibodythey will be born with a population of cells that are constantly churning out anti-plague antibodies, keeping them protected from the disease. Even better, these genetic instructions would be passed down to the animals offspring as well, eliminating the need for further interventions.

But figuring out exactly how to do this is tricky and with fewer than a thousand black-footed ferrets left in existence, scientists dont want to troubleshoot the process by practicing on this endangered species. Instead, theyre starting with lab mice, whose genetics are extremely well-studied. Weve created a transgenic line of mice that express antibodies against plague in their germline, and can be passed on from generation to generation, says Baumgartner. Once mouse testing is complete, researchers would also perform testing in the more common domestic ferret to confirm safety and efficacy before implementing this technique in the black-footed ferret.

Baumgartner says that if this genetic engineering is successful, it will not only keep the ferrets from dying of the disease, it will also keep them from transmitting it. While engineering plague resistance in the black-footed ferret is largely for conservation purposes, blocking transmission is an important factor if scientists ever want to apply this technique to other species in order to protect humans. Perhaps in the future, this genetic engineering trick could be applied to other animals that transmit plague to humans (either through bites or via fleas)like prairie dogs in the United States, black rats in Madagascar, or great gerbils in Kazakhstan.

Other projects are more directly targeted at reducing human disease by engineering wildlife. Kevin Esvelt, director of the Sculpting Evolution group at MIT, has turned his attention to the white-footed mouse. With their big eyes and fuzzy white bellies, this species might not look dangerous, but in fact, they are an important natural reservoir for Lyme disease bacteria, which sicken an estimated 300,000 Americans every year.

While ticks are generally blamed for spreading Lyme disease, this is only half the story. Ticks arent born carrying Lyme disease bacteria; they pick up the bacteria when they feed on infected small mammals like the white-footed mouse. They can then transmit the bacteria to their next host, sometimes an unfortunate human. While deer are an important food source for the tick, they dont actually carry the bacteria andexcept in cases where it is possible to totally eliminate the deer populationsthere is insufficient evidence that reducing deer numbers helps control Lyme disease.

Thats why Esvelt and his team are looking for solutions that target the white-footed mouse. The scientists are searching for the most effective antibodies against Lyme disease in white-footed mice. Once they identify these antibodies, they could build instructions for these antibodies into the genome, just like scientists want to do with the black-footed ferret and plague antibodies. The team could then raise lots and lots of mice that constantly produce antibodies against Lyme disease, making them immune to Lyme. These mice could then be released into areas where Lyme disease is prevalent in order to reduce disease transmission.

Esvelt says that genetic instructions for antibodies that confer Lyme disease protection are already known in humans and in laboratory mice, and acknowledges that it would probably be easier to just take a protective gene from one of these species and put it in a white-footed mouse. But members of the communities in which the mice might be releasedNantucket and Marthas Vineyardexpressed that they would prefer that white-footed mice were only engineered to have genes from other individuals of their species, not genes from different species.

Even if its more difficult this way, Esvelt says community members should be able to have the final say. Its their environment, so its their call.

This is in accordance with research showing that the public is more concerned about transgenic animals (animals with genes from other species) than cisgenic animals (which are genetically modified, but with added genes from the same species). Cisgenic animals may be perceived as more natural, since their genetic structure is one that is technically possible in nature (i.e. it could occur through breeding or natural mutation) and thus may be seen as less problematic. Even if its more difficult this way, Esvelt says community members should be able to have the final say. Its their environment, so its their call.

Esvelt says that when it comes to ecological engineering, input from the communities that will be affected is extremely important. If scientists develop a new drug, he points out, you can always choose not to take it. But if scientists alter the place where you live by releasing genetically engineered animals, you cant choose not to be affected by the consequences.

If we deny [communities] a voice in what the technology looks like, if we dont tell them what were doing and invite their concerns and criticism and suggestions from the early experimental design stage when it matters, then were denying them a voice in decisions intended to affect them; where they wont be able to opt out, Esvelt says.

Although the team plans to start slowlyreleasing and analyzing the mice first on uninhabited islands and then on larger islands like Nantucketthe end goal is for Lyme-resistant mice to be implemented on the mainland, potentially greatly reducing the burden of Lyme disease in the United States.

Even further down the line, Esvelt says that lessons learned during this project could also be relevant for other diseases. For example, the white-footed mouse and its close relative the deer mouse both carry and transmit hantavirus to humans, causing severe and often fatal lung infections. Thus, engineering disease resistance in these mice could help protect humans from multiple types of dangerous pathogens.

Of course, no discussion of genetic engineering of wildlife is complete without including the worlds deadliest animal: the mosquito. Because they spread so many types of pathogenslike those that cause Zika, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, and malaria, just to name a fewmosquitos are responsible for hundreds of thousands of human deaths each year. Omar Akbari, a professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of California, San Diego, wants to engineer a less-deadly mosquito. Among other creatures, Akbaris lab works with a species of mosquito called Aedes aegypti. Native to Africa, the Aedes aegypti mosquito now thrives on every continent except Antarctica, sowing epidemics of yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, which have caused tremendous amounts of human suffering and death.

So far, Akbari and his collaborators have created Aedes aegypti mosquitos that are resistant to dengue and Zika virus. But the work doesnt stop thereAkbari says that these genetic engineering techniques could be applied to other species of mosquitos and other diseases. I think it can work for many different disease vectors, Akbari says. There are a lot of mosquito species on Earthover 3,500 different speciesbut theres really only a handful of them that are transmitting pathogens to us. By targeting these few species, scientists could have a major global health impact.

But while genetically engineering wild species could potentially have major benefits for the species themselves and the humans they share an environment with, the scientists working on these projects emphasize that caution is needed.

Careful evaluation of downstream ecological effects is essential. If the genetic engineering causes the species to become more abundant, scientists need to make sure that it doesnt harm the species that they consume or compete with. If the engineered species becomes less abundant, they need to make sure that doesnt impact animals that rely on that species for food. Just like plants and animals, pathogens may also fill a newly vacated ecological nicheso if animals no longer host one type of pathogen, scientists need to make sure that a new pathogen wont swoop in to claim the newly available real estate.

But ecology is a complex science and even with careful assessment, there may be unforeseen problems and scientists need to have a back-up plan if things go wrong. It comes down to being able to take it back. So thats one of the things thats scariest about itif we put [a genetically modified species] out in the wild, its not like we can just go and get it again, Baumgartner says. The safety mechanisms have to be developed in parallel with these genetic interventions.

Scientists are working on building these safety mechanisms into the animals themselves. If scientists want the genes for disease resistance to spread throughout an animal population, they can use a CRISPR-mediated gene drivea technique that alters the probability that the gene of interest will be inherited by offspring. While most genes have a 50 percent chance of being inherited by an organisms babies, scientists can use a gene drive to increase this likelihoodtheoretically up to 100 percent. Scientists do this by giving the animal genetic code not only for the disease resistance gene, but also code to build a CRISPR system to cut out the gene they dont want. The offspring of a modified organism and a wild organism starts out with one copy of the disease resistance gene and one copy of the wild gene. But the CRISPR system it inherited from the modified parent snips out the copy of the wild gene, which gets replaced by the modified, disease resistance gene. This happens every time a modified organism mates, resulting in all the offspring, and the offsprings offspring, and so on, having two copies of the disease resistance gene.

But once this drive gets going, it could result in this gene spreading to every animal of this species in the entire world, so researchers want to make sure there is a way to hit the brakes.

Scientists are experimenting with different ways to create gene drives that are self-limiting: drives that can be used to spread a gene throughout a local population but wont spread indefinitely. One way to do this is to split up the components that the gene drive needs to function. For example, in a split drive, scientists can split the drive into part A and part B and put them in different places on the genome. When an organism has part A and part B, the gene drive functions and all of the animals offspring will have the gene of interestin this case, the gene that makes it resistant to disease. But scientists can also make it costly for an organism to carry part A; maybe part A makes the animal just a little bit less able to survive or reproduce. After several generations, natural selection will eventually eliminate part A from the population. Without part A, the drive no longer functions, and the gene of interest will once again only have a 50 percent chance of being inherited.

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Why replacement organs will come from a farm.

Scientists still need to do more testing on the various ways to put the brakes on a gene drive to make sure that they wont go awry once the animals are released into the wild. Currently, genetic modification is regulated on a country- or continent-level basis, which may be problematic as releasing a gene drive in one country could potentially affect many surrounding countries. In the United States, regulation of genetically modified organisms falls under the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology, which includes the FDA, USDA, and the EPA. Regulation is a contentious subject: Debates at the United Nations have turned into yelling matches and critics have argued that current regulations do not take into account input from local communities, who may be most affected by the release of gene-drive organisms.

Attempts to modify nature will always be haunted by early, carelessly initiated biocontrol effortslike the introduction of cane toads in Australia or mongooses in Hawaiithat had disastrous consequences for native wildlife. More recent failures have been less spectacularly devastating but still concerning; for example, a fly introduced to eat an invasive weed in Australia also appears to serve as a pollinator for it. In another case, gall flies were introduced to control a different invasive weed in the American West. Unfortunately, the fly larvae turned out to be a great source of nutrition for deer mice. As the deer mouse population increased, so too did the levels of hantavirus, which is carried by mice and can be deadly to humans. Clearly, more exhaustive evaluation of ecosystem effects was warranted in these scenarios.

Even with careful testing, assessment, and regulation, its possible that something could go wrong. The natural world is a complicated placeeven within a single square mile, it might not be possible to fully understand the interactions of every species of mammal, reptile, insect, plant, parasite, bacteria, fungus, and virus and how these interactions would respond to changes in the ecosystem.

As scientists and bioethicists have pointed out, many seemingly beneficial genetic changes could have catastrophic consequences. For example, if scientists engineered a species of coral to be resistant to climate change, it might be able to outcompete all of the other coral species on the reef, resulting in a loss of coral biodiversity and negative impacts on other creatures living in the reef ecosystem. Engineering animals to be pathogen-resistant puts new evolutionary pressures on the pathogen, which could cause it to change in dangerous ways: It might become more virulent or evolve the ability to infect different species, ultimately increasing instead of decreasing the burden of human disease.

However, while there are tangible risks of unforeseen consequences for releasing genetically engineered wildlife, there also could be serious consequences of not implementing these technologies. If you have a problem like malaria, for example, with no really great solutions, Akbari says, you have the risk of people dying if you dont use the new technology. Eventually, well need to choose whether to risk altering ecosystems with genetic engineering or risk the lives of humans and endangered species by foregoing it.

Read more:

Cloning Wildlife and Editing their Genes to Protect Them and Us - NEO.LIFE

The Ministry of National Security has debunked the allegation of phone cloning purported by one of the conveners of #FixtheCountry movement, Oliver Barker-Vormawor.

In a communiqu dated May 9, the Information Minister emphatically stated that the National Security operatives have no interest in monitoring the affairs of the said group, therefore, have no basis for cloning anyones phone.

According to Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the group were invited by the ministry and as protocol demands, all phones of visitors are kept at the reception of the Ministry.

He further added that the phones of the conveners were not tampered with as being purported.

Mr Nkrumah noted that in instances where the Agencies of the Ministry have the need to investigate the electronic devices of a person, legal methods such as a proper court warrant are employed. The phone cloning allegation is therefore false and baseless.

The communiqu comes on the back of the allegation made by Mr Barker-Vormawor stating that the National Security operatives are monitoring the phone records of one of the prospective protesters.

This suspicion, he said, was triggered when the group were tricked into a meeting with sector ministers instead of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) as they were earlier told to discuss their planned demonstration.

The only Android phone members of the movement had on them at the National Security Ministry according to Mr Vormawor, was cloned as calls to that particular phone number was being diverted to an unknown number registered by the name Monitoring.

Reacting to that the Ofoase-AyirebiMP refuted the assertion that the ministry lured the convenors into a meeting.

He said, the conveners were invited to a meeting to which they voluntarily attended. The allegation that they were coerced into a meeting is, therefore, untrue.

Mr Oppong Nkrumah further asked the general public to disregard the said allegation.

Go here to read the rest:

#FixTheCountry convener's claim of phone cloning false and baseless - Oppong Nkrumah - Myjoyonline.com

One current project aims to use new technology to create domestic chickens with the gonads of Greater Prairie-Chickens, giving the barnyard birds the ability to produce prairie-chicken eggs. Photo: Ravi Hirekatur/Audubon Photography Awards

Earlier this year, scientists announced that they had successfully cloned an endangered North American species for the first time. Elizabeth Ann the black-footed ferretthe clone of an individual named Willa who died more than30 years agowas born via C-section on December 10, 2020. Without the aid of cloning technology or the forward-thinking researchers who froze Willas DNA, her genes would have been lost forever. Elizabeth Anns birth bringsfresh genetic diversity to the black-footed ferret captive-breeding program, and is an important step towardhelping other endangered species.

Conservation cloning is a tool of last resort. Its most promisinguses are either for species that are descended from just a handful of individuals,known as a genetic bottleneck,or species that are in danger of going extinct now. Even though Elizabeth Ann's birth demonstrates cloning's potential hope for at-risk mammals, its a different story when it comes to avian conservation.

Weve been asked a few times now, when is this going to happen for birds?, says Ben Novak, a lead scientist with Revive & Restore, the organization that spearheaded the black-footed ferret cloning efforts. The answer, Novak says, is probably nevercloning likely isnt possible in birds.

To understand why, its important to know how cloning works. Theres more than one way to get a clone (including, for instance, identical twins), but the technique made famous by Dolly the sheep and used to create Elizabeth Ann is called somatic cell nuclear transfer.This process involves swapping out the genetic information of an egg cell and replacing it with the DNA of a donor individual. First, the researchers take the egg cell and place it under a microscope. Then, they zero in on its nucleus, which is the part of the cell that contains the vast majority of its genetic information. They carefully suck that nucleus out, leaving the egg cell empty of its genetic code. This means that the egg is now a blank slate ready to be filled with a new set of instructions.

The next step is to insert either a body cell (also known as a somatic cell) or its nucleus from the individual they want to clone, which contains the donors genetic material. Once the new cell and itsinstructions are inside the egg, researchers encourage the two to fuse with a jolt of electricity. If everything has gone right, this tricks the egg cell into thinking it has been fertilized, and it will start to divide and multiply, forming an embryo.After growing for a while in a petri dish, theresulting embryo can be implanted in the uterus of a surrogate mother, who will give birth to a clone.

In practice, only a fraction of these nuclear transfers result in viable embryos that go on to become adult animals. Even so, a lot of mammalseven wild species like deer, graywolves, and macaqueshave been cloned in this way since Dolly the sheep proved it was possible back in 1996. But there has never been a single cloned bird.

There are a few reasons why birds have been impossible to clone so far.The biggest hurdle? Its what you had for breakfast, says Tom Jensen, a reproductive scientist with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. The egg yolk.

That nucleus-swapping trick is easy enough to do with mammal egg cells, which range from about one to three human hairs width in diameter, Jensen explains. These little eggs are the perfect size to slide under a microscope, where scientists can get down to a microscopic level and locate the tiny DNA-containing nucleus. But in birds, the egg cellwhat we call the yolkis a lot bigger. And the nucleus holding all of the bird's DNA is a miniscule white dot in the middle of that yolk, which the embryo will eventually grow out of.

The yolk is basically a bird embryo'spacked lunch from mom, providing it with all thenutrients itneeds toeventually growintoa baby bird ready to hatch.The arrangement is anefficient one, but it alsopresents two majorissuesfor scientists trying toclone a bird. First, the yolk's sizeprevents it fromfittingunder amicroscope to conduct the necessary work. And second, even if scientists could inspect the yolk on a microscopic level,findingthat tinynucleus floating somewhere in the yolkisextremely challenging. Novak hasdescribedthe process as akin to "looking for a white marble in a pool of milk."

Another issue with eggsis that once the yolk leaves the ovary, it is always on the move. During the typical cloning process with a mammal, researchers can just stick the embryo in a surrogate mothers uterus and let it grow. Birds have no such incubation chamber. After the yolk forms, its dropped into something called the oviduct, where it tumbles down an assembly line that coats it with first the egg white, and then the shell membrane. There is no uterus equivalent in which to stick a bird clone embryo.

Its technically much easier in a mammal than it would be in a bird, Jensen says. So, I dont think itll ever be anything we can use for bird conservation.

Currently, without the ability to cryopreserve the cells ofbird species and clone themlater, there is no scientific failsafe for birds like there is for mammalsin case of genetic bottlenecks orcritical endangerment.However,Jensen is hoping a different emerging genetic technology could perform a similar role for endangered bird species. This onefocuses not on creating an entire clone, but on altering what kinds of chicks an individual is producing. That requires researchers to focus on birds' testes and ovaries, also called the gonads.We dont really care that [the host species]looks like the animal, what we care about is that its gonads are identical to the animal that were cloning, right? Jensen says. In birds, we can kind of clone the gonad.

The bird answer to cloning hinges on something called primordial germ cells, or PGCs. Thats basically a fancy term for the cells that are destined to become sperm and egg cells. Cloning a mammal involves inserting the DNA of one individual into one egg, and producing one offspring that is the genetic replica of the donor. With PGC technology, the goal is to createa surrogate with gonads that contain the DNA of another species. Reseearchers refer to these hybrid animalsas chimeras.

To makea chimera, researchers carefully insert PGCs from a donor into a host embryo as it is developing. The PGCs then migrate down to the host embryos gonads. If everything goes to plan, the host will grow up to become an adultthat produces sperm or eggs containing the DNA of the donor.

So, for instance, you might have a domestic rooster host who produces sperm with the DNA of a Greater Prairie-Chicken. If the rooster were mated with a female Greater Prairie-Chicken, the pair could then produce Greater Prairie-Chicken chicks. This approach has the benefit that one host parent could theoretically produce many offspring with the DNA of a donor over the course of its lifetime, rather than the single individual that would be produced via cloning. And, as long as researchers can cryopreserve these PGCs, this can still offer the benefit of bringing back DNA from a donor that died long ago.

The catch is that PGC technology is much trickier than cloning, with more steps that could potentially go wrong, so its still in development.Researchers have made some progress, however, that makes Jensen and Novak hopeful that the technology could one day be used for conservation.

Most of the research thus far has involved domestic chickens. Several groups of researchers have successfully transferred PGCs from one breed of chicken into another, producing offspring with donor DNA. Researchers have also used the technique to successfully produce Maya Ducks, Korean Pheasants, and even Houbara Bustards by mating chimera domestic chicken males to the females of those species.

Jensen and his team, for their part, are looking into whether stem cells from dead individuals can be used for this technique, and trying to figure out how far apart the donor and the host species can be genetically. So far, any cells his lab has experimentally introduced to chicken embryos have migrated to the gonads like theyre supposed to. Which is a really, really good sign for working across multiple specieseven distantly related species, Jensen says. Although we have not yet hatched any chickens to verify functional sperm production.

Revive & Restore, meanwhile, is in the process of producing interspecies chimeraswithconservation in mind. More specifically, theyre in the preliminary stages of gettingdomestic chickens to produce Greater Prairie-Chicken sperm. Rosemary Walzem, a researcher with Texas A&M University, is currently leading these efforts. Her labhosts a flock of Greater Prairie-Chickens, and this spring her team is hoping to carefully extract some primordial germ cells (a tricky task in its own right) to eventually try to introduce into domestic chickens. The idea is to perfect the process with a species that is closely related to domestic chickens, then apply what they learn to related species that are endangeredor even extinct.

Eventually, this technology might help to improve the genetic diversity of species like California Condors or Whooping Cranes that are descended from just a few individuals. Pretty much any breeding program where you could go in and bring an individual back from decades later would really benefit from that diversity injection, Jensen says.

Ideally, this technology would never be necessary. The best approach to conservation is to keep species plentiful and their habitats and ecosystems intact. But it could be a valuable tool in worst-case scenarios. Jensen and Novak say that they ultimately hope the technology will be developed to the point that researchers can capture wild birds with mist nets, extracttheir primordial germ cells, and then release them. The cells could then be stored away, or they could immediately be placed in a host to reproduce more of the species without having to take a wild population into captive breeding. But that vision is still a long way off, both admit.Our goals are very ambitious, Novak says. But we think theyre doable.

More:

The Surprising Reason Scientists Haven't Been Able to Clone a Bird Yet - National Audubon Society

The Road Transport Department (JPJ) has said that the act of falsifying the registration of cars smuggled into Malaysia, commonly referred to as cloned cars, is not only done secretly without the knowledge of the original owners, but also by those who conspired with syndicates that offered them compensation to be involved in the illegal act.

In a report by Sinar Harian, the director of JPJ Selangor, Nazli Md Taib, said that low prices spur the demand for cloned cars mostly luxury vehicles and that from 2016 to March this year, a total of 314 cloned vehicles have been seized.

A cloned vehicle is defined as any motor vehicle used on the road that resembles a Malaysian-registered vehicle, using identical number plates taken from a similar legitimately-registered model. According to Nazli, there are a few categories of cloned vehicles, including those that are not registered and brought in through ports or borders either from Thailand or Singapore.

For example, in the case of a cloned Toyota Vellfire in white, the syndicate will clone the vehicle using an existing Toyota Vellfire [of the same colour] registered in the country. The cloned vehicle would then be used in Kedah or states where it is unlikely that the owner of the legitimately registered vehicle will go to the states involved to avoid it being detected, said Nazli.

This cloned car will use either a falsified road tax or a copy of the original vehicle road tax. If the syndicate takes someone elses registration number and uses it on a cloned car, this is a forgery. Most cases like these are brought up to us when the original owner says he received a summon in a place he never went to. As such, we will send the information to the state concerned for further action, he continued.

While this category of cloned cars involves falsifying a vehicle registration without the knowledge of the original owner, Nazli said there are those who conspired with syndicates to perform the illegal act. As an example, he said there was a case where a syndicate approached a Volkswagen owner and offered to pay his monthly car instalment in exchange for duplicating the vehicles registration.

The owner, influenced by money, would agree to the terms. This is a case of the owner agreeing. The suspect would then clone several of such cars based on the agreement between the owner and the syndicate, Nazli explained.

The syndicate would then bring in the cloned car using the same registration number as the original car. The syndicate and the original vehicle owner would also agree on certain terms, including forbidding the latter to go to the state where the cloned car was sold in, he added.

Nazli goes on to say that based on the agreement with by the syndicate, the original vehicle owner will go to the department to apply for a new road tax disc on the pretense of the current one being damaged or missing. Here, the original vehicle owner that conspired with the syndicate will obtain a new road tax disc and hand it over to the syndicate to be used on the cloned car, he said.

Nazli noted that cloned vehicles that are registered this way were worth more than those with fake registrations, adding that syndicates were also able to use advanced technologies to produce fake road tax discs that appeared genuine.

The department picked up on this activity when the original vehicle owner came to apply for a new road tax again for the third time using the same excuses. There have also been cases where a syndicate revived the registration of vehicles that have been declared a total lost after being involved in a serious accident.

These acts make it difficult for the public to determine if a car has been registered legally or cloned, Nazli commented, adding that it can be very difficult to differentiate a forged road tax disc from an original, requiring the department to send samples to Percetakan Nasional for validation. He goes on to say that if a luxury vehicle is sold for as low as RM20,000, theres certainly something amiss with the vehicle, but there are still those who buy it.

Link:

JPJ finds there are vehicle owners who conspired with car cloning syndicates to duplicate original road tax - paultan.org - Paul Tan's Automotive News

A large scale Voice Cloning Market report aims to thrive in the competitive market by giving knowhow of consumers demands, preferences, attitudes and their changing tastes about the specific product. This market document estimates the growth rate and the market value based on market dynamics and growth inducing factors. Additionally, businesses can get highly benefited with this information to decide on their production and marketing strategies. All the major topics of market research analysis are covered here that includes market definition, market segmentation, competitive analysis, major developments in the market, and top-notch research methodology.

Global Voice Cloning Market, By Component (Solutions, Services), Deployment Mode (On-Premises, Cloud), End-Use (Chatbot and Assistants, Accessibility, Digital Games, Interactive Games, Others), Application (Telecom and Tourism, Education and Healthcare, Media and Entertainment, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI), Others), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia- Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Israel, Rest of Middle East & Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028

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Voice cloning market is expected to gain market growth in the forecast period of 2021 to 2028. Data Bridge Market Research analyses the market to reach at an estimated value of USD 4446.08 million and grow at a CAGR of 25.74% in the above-mentioned forecast period. Rising rapid surge in demand for IoT and connected devices drives the voice cloning market.

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The major players covered in the voice cloning market report are Microsoft, IBM, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates., Nuance Communications, Inc, iSpeech, Inc., ReadSpeaker Holding B.V, CereProc Ltd, Cepstral, Descript, Kata.ai, ALT Creative, Inc., Aristech GmbH, Acapela Group, VocaliD, Inc., CandyVoice, LumenVox, rSpeak Technologies, Smartbox Assistive Technology and Vivotex India Pvt. Ltd. among other domestic and global players. Market share data is available for Global, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America separately. DBMR analysts understand competitive strengths and provide competitive analysis for each competitor separately.

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Voice cloning market also provides you with detailed market analysis for every country growth in healthcare expenditure for capital equipments, installed base of different kind of products for voice cloning market, impact of technology using life line curves and changes in healthcare regulatory scenarios and their impact on the voice cloning market. The data is available for historic period 2010 to 2019.

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Table of Content:

1 INTRODUCTION

2 MARKET SEGMENTATION

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 PREMIUM INSIGHTS

5 MARKET OVERVIEW

6 BY TYPE

7 BY PRODUCT TYPE

8 BY APPLICATION

9 BY MATERIAL TYPE

10 BY GEOGRAPHY

11 COMPANY PROFILE

12 QUESTIONNAIRE

13 RELATED REPORTS

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Voice Cloning Market Expected to Witness a Sustainable Growth over 2028 | iSpeech, Inc., ReadSpeaker Holding BV, CereProc Ltd, Cepstral, Descript,...