Born: 5 July 1996
Died: 14 February 2003 (euthanization)
Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
Best known as the first cloned mammal
Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female domestic sheep, and the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer.
She was cloned by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the biotechnology company PPL Therapeutics, based near Edinburgh.
Cloning Process of Dolly
The funding for Dollys cloning was provided by PPL Therapeutics and the Ministry of Agriculture.
She was born on 5 July 1996 and died from a progressive lung disease 5 months before her seventh birthday.
She has been called "the worlds most famous sheep" by sources including BBC News and Scientific American.
The cell used as the donor for the cloning of Dolly was taken from a mammary gland, and the production of a healthy clone therefore proved that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual.
On 14 February 2003, Dolly was euthanised because she had a progressive lung disease and severe arthritis. A Finn Dorset such as Dolly has a life expectancy of around 11 to 12 years, but Dolly lived to be 6.5 years old.
A post-mortem examination showed she had a form of lung cancer called Jaagsiekte, which is a fairly common disease of sheep and is caused by the retrovirus JSRV.
Roslin scientists stated that they did not think there was a connection with Dolly being a clone, and that other sheep in the same flock had died of the same disease.Such lung diseases are a particular danger for sheep kept indoors, and Dolly had to sleep inside for security reasons.
Some in the press speculated that a contributing factor to Dollys death was that she could have been born with a genetic age of six years, the same age as the sheep from which she was cloned.One basis for this idea was the finding that Dollys telomeres were short, which is typically a result of the ageing process.
The Roslin Institute have stated that intensive health screening did not reveal any abnormalities in Dolly that could have come from advanced aging.
Source
wikipedia