The project has yet to successfully clone the dog, and researchers predict it may take as long as five years to do so. Japanese scientists have produced a clone of a cloned bull, the first time a large cloned animal has been cloned itself, researchers say. The bull was cloned as part of a project to study the life expectancy and aging of cloned animals, scientists at the Kagoshima Prefectural Cattle Breeding Development Institute said. Scientists there are studying three generations of genetically identical bulls - the original animal and two clones. The main purpose of the institute's project is to produce better beef cattle.
Cloning also reduces the amount of time needed for reproduction.
Cows to not mate naturally until they are about 14 months old, but the tissue from an animal as young as three months can be used to clone an identical calf. Cloned beef is already sold in Japanese stores, but the announcement that the government had allowed cloned beef to be sold without being labeled as such sparked a beef boycott nationwide. Monkey Born in Lab Scientists announced recently that they had successfully cloned a rhesus macaque monkey, using a different method than that used to clone Dolly the sheep. While Dolly was cloned by taking the nucleus out of an adult cell and using it to reprogram an unfertilized egg, Tetra was made by splitting a very early embryo into four pieces. The cloned monkey, called Tetra, is genetically identical to the embryo from which she was cloned.