Dolly (sheep)
Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female domestic sheep, and the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer.
In Re Roslin Institute (Edinburgh)
Dolly was cloned in 1996 by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh Scotland. BBC News and Scientific American called Dolly "the world's most famous sheep," The cloning method Campbell and Wilmut used to create Dolly constituted a breakthrough in scientific discovery. Known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, this process involves removing the nucleus of a regular body cell and implanting that nucleus into an egg cell that has had its cell nucleus removed. A nucleus is the organelle that holds a cell's genetic material (its DNA). Campbell and Wilmut found that if the donor, somatic cell is arrested in the stage of the cell cycle where it is dormant and non-replicating (the quiescent phase) prior to nuclear transfer, the resulting fused cell will develop into an embryo. The resulting cloned animal is an exact genetic replica of the adult mammal from which the somatic cell nucleus was taken.