The age of the original parent cell appears to determine the age of the cloned animal, report the scientists who first cloned Dolly the sheep. Dolly, the famous sheep clone, was cloned from an udder cell of a six year old sheep. So the question is, would Dolly's older parent cell make her age faster. The answer so far is maybe.
Telomeres are pieces of DNA found on the ends of chromosomes.
They get smaller with repeated DNA replication and are believed to signal aging and death in cells. Scottish researchers compared the length of the telomeres in Dolly's cells with those from animals produced in the traditional manner. They also looked at the telomeres of two other sheep clones, one derived from embryo cells and the other from fetal cells. The telomeres were indeed shorter in all of the clones compared with the normal animals. The difference was most pronounced in the cells taken from Dolly and in those from the animal cloned from embryo cells.