A robot that automates a common technique for animal cloning has been used to produce a litter of cloned pigs in China with a much higher success rate than human scientists.<\/p>\n
The challenge: China is both the worlds biggest producer of pork and its largest consumer, so having ideal breeding stock animals that birthe large litters of quick-growing piglets is important for the nations economy and food security.<\/p>\n
However, in 2018 and 2019, an epidemic of deadly African swine fever wiped out almost 50% of Chinas pig population. As a result, many farmers have had to import breeding pigs, and China is now eager for its pork industry to become almost entirely self-sufficient.<\/p>\n
Manual animal cloning is a tedious, time-consuming process with a 10% success rate.<\/p>\n
The idea: Instead of importing pigs, Chinese farmers could clone them, turning one strong breeder into a herd. The most common method for animal cloning is somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).<\/p>\n
First, a scientist removes the nucleus from an animals egg cell, which is then replaced with a nucleus taken from a regular body (or somatic) cell of the animal being cloned. The embryo with the transplanted nucleus is then implanted in a surrogate to develop like any other.<\/p>\n
But this is a tedious, time-consuming process conducted under a microscope, and it only has a 10% success rate.<\/p>\n
Robotic animal cloning: Researchers at Nankai University have now built a robot that can autonomously perform SCNT cloning. In March 2022, embryos created entirely by the system were used to produce a litter of seven cloned pigs, birthed by a surrogate mother.<\/p>\n
Each step of the cloning process was automated, and no human operation was involved, researcher Liu Yaowei told the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n
Our AI-powered system reduces the cell damage caused by human hands.<\/p>\n
The fact that such a tricky, complex process as animal cloning can be automated is remarkable enough, but the system is also far better at the process than human scientists, with a success rate of 27.5%.<\/p>\n
Our AI-powered system can calculate the strain within a cell and direct the robot to use minimal force to complete the cloning process, which reduces the cell damage caused by human hands, Liu said.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead: A peer-reviewed paper detailing the teams work will soon be published in the journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Liu told the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n
The groups immediate hope is that their tech could help Chinas pork industry become self-sufficient but it could have implications far beyond the nations pig farms.<\/p>\n
If the cost of robotic animal cloning isnt prohibitive, cloning could be useful for researching new drugs, climate-proofing the food supply, protecting endangered species, or even (more speculatively) resurrecting extinct ones.<\/p>\n
Wed love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at tips@freethink.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n See the article here:<\/p>\n Chinese robot clones pigs with no human help - Freethink<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A robot that automates a common technique for animal cloning has been used to produce a litter of cloned pigs in China with a much higher success rate than human scientists. The challenge: China is both the worlds biggest producer of pork and its largest consumer, so having ideal breeding stock animals that birthe large litters of quick-growing piglets is important for the nations economy and food security. However, in 2018 and 2019, an epidemic of deadly African swine fever wiped out almost 50% of Chinas pig population Continue reading