Stories from the far-side of research: a scientist’s view Animal
biotechnology is still a relatively young area of biological
science. With this status both excitement and what appear as
large leaps forwards in our understanding and capability are
possible. Perhaps this was best illustrated when in 1996 Dolly
the cloned sheep was born at Roslin. But there have been other
dramatic animals produced, for example the goat-sheep chimera or
geep produced about a decade earlier. Within an experimental
context the production of chimeric animals, still predominantly
rodents, is a powerful way to tease apart the factors that
control how tissues, organs and body fluids are formed and
function. Though the majority of chimeric animals that have been
produced are intra-species, for example, a mouse that comprises
cells from two different mouse strains, there are examples of
inter-species chimeras. The geep and a recent study describing a
mouse that has a pancreas derived from rat stem cells have
stimulated much thought. Fu