derekmead writes "Dolly's mere existence was profound. It was
also unusually short, at just six years. But scientists in Japan
announced yesterday they have succeeded in cloning mice using
the same technique that created Dolly with more or less perfect
results: The mice are healthy, they live just as long as regular
mice, and they've been flawlessly cloned and recloned from the
same source to the 25th generation. Researchers claim it's the
first example of seamless, repeat cloning using the Dolly
method—known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT)—in which
the nucleus from an adult source animal is transferred to an egg
with its nucleus removed. Until recently, the process was
fraught with failures and mutations. But the team led by
Teruhiko Wakayama, whose results were published today in the
journal Cell Stem Cell, was able to create 581 clones from the
same original mouse. Scientists, including Dolly's creator, have
long felt the process was still too unstable—and too wasteful of
precious eggs, given the