Researchers have recently successfully cloned a domestic cat. Although the two-month-old kitten is just another addition to the growing list of successfully cloned animals, her birth may mark the beginning of a pet cloning era. The carbon copy kitten has been named 'Cc:'. Mark Westhusin and colleagues at Texas a&m University, USA, created Cc: by transplanting DNA from a female three-coloured cat into an egg cell whose nucleus had been removed. They then implanted this embryo into the surrogate tabby. Cc:'s coat colour suggests that she is a clone. A genetic match between Cc: and the donor mother confirms this. She does not, however, look identical to her DNA donor as the pattern on a cat's coat is partly determined by genes (www.bbc.co.uk , February 23, 2002).
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