LIMA: Peru has successfully cloned its first cow.
This was announced by scientists at the Universidad Toribio Rodriguez de Mendoza (UTRM) in Chachapoyas, 1,200km north of Lima.
The cow is called Alma CI, and she was produced by “handmade cloning.”
After Chile, Peru is only the second Latin American country to use this technique.
“This means a lot to the researchers,” Dr Luis Murga, one of the creators of Alma, said. “We got our results through a lot of hard work. We are very proud and happy to bring cloning from the Amazon, Peru, into the world and become one of only 16 countries that use this kind of advanced technology,” Murga said.
Handmade cloning is less costly than traditional cloning which uses an expensive machine called a micromanipulator.
Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned animal, was cloned in Scotland in 1996 using this technique. Using the micromanipulator, scientists examine an egg cell under the microscope, insert a very fine needle to suck out its nucleus, and then use another needle to transfer a nucleus from the animal to be cloned. The Peruvian scientists created Alma’s embryo using an ear cell from another cow.--BERNAMA