Instead, they want to use somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same process used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1997, to create embryonic stem cells.
If I understand the tetraploid complementation technique utilized in these experiments correctly, then, scientists would no longer need to generate embryos via somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning).
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The problem is that making them using somatic-cell nuclear transfer involves breaking up viable embryos, since the cells in question are found inside early-stage embryos, called blastocysts.
"Somatic cell nuclear transfer does not relate to cloning, and the people who call it therapeutic cloning are creating a lot of confusion, because it is not cloning at all, and it certainly is not reproductive cloning, " Specter said.
Even Dolly the sheep, who was produced by cloning via somatic nuclear cell transfer, benefited from a male imprinted genome.
Instead of generating embryonic stem cell lines via nuclear transfer, Hwang's group produced the stem cells from days-old embryos, a technique that had already been established by James Thomson at University of Wisconsin in 1998.
In 2001, a gaur nicknamed Noah, a Southeast Asian threatened ox, was successfully created in the womb of Bessie, a cow, by scientists using a nuclear transfer process at Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts.
Geron , the stem-cell company he founded before moving to ACT, has often talked of nuclear transfer as a way of figuring out how to make stem cells.
"Nuclear transfer is really about the ability to take an adult cell and basically reprogram it so that you can grow an embryo from it, " Earp says.
Only last year, she said, Egli and Paull and their colleagues demonstrated that the nuclear transfer of eggs cells could generate patient-specific stem cell lines for potential cell replacement therapy to treat diseases like diabetes.
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Geron (nadsaq: GERN - news - people ), the stem-cell company he founded before moving to ACT, has often talked of nuclear transfer as a way of figuring out how to make stem cells.
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