Not long after the Scottish researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh made public their accomplishment, scientists around the world succeeded in cloning a menagerie of animals. And within the last year, doctors at a South Korean fertility clinic reported making a four-celled embryo that was the clone of an infertile woman. While some said the world misjudged the pace of cloning research, such a rapid pace of technological evolution seems to be the norm looking back at the 20th century. It's a question that will be answered in the new millennium. Her cells, the scientists reported, had slightly stunted telomeres, the tickertape-like appendages to chromosomes.
Telomeres are the yardsticks measuring a cell's life expectancy.
With each cell division, the telomeres shorten, marking off the number of divisions remaining before the cell dies. But some scientists, noting the difficulties of measuring things as small as telomeres, say Dolly's reportedly stunted telomeres may be errors in measurement or simply within the normal variation for sheep. The information will be stored in databases. By reading our genes, scientists and doctors will gain a better understanding of the human body. Genes are responsible for making all the proteins required by the body.