Cloned cattle to beef up Australian herds

SYDNEY, May 2. (Reuters): Hundreds of identical super-bulls could soon be set loose to breed in the vast Australian outback, thanks to a frisky young calf called Suzi.

Four-week-old Suzi is Australia's first proper cloned calf, reproduced from developed cells in much the same way that Dolly the sheep was born in Scotland three years ago. Announcing her birth, scientists said on Tuesday that the cloning technology could transform one of the world's biggest beef and dairy industries.

"Technology is now starting to reach levels of efficiency where we're within five years of commercial reality," Suzi's creator, Dr Ian Lewis, said. (Reuters photo shows Ian Lewis holding Suzi in Melbourne on Tuesday.) "In five years' time there would be hundreds, up to thousands of cloned animals, I would think. It's a big step forward for Australian agriculture."

Suzi was produced from foetus cells which after removal were grown in the laboratory and cloned as in the Dolly procedure, which involved electrical impulses fusing cultured cells with unfertilised eggs. The resulting embryo was then transferred into a surrogate cow which carried the pregnancy.

Lewis said herds of cloned Australian dairy cattle could be produced in the same way. For beef cattle, which roam the remote Australian outback, the method is seen involving the production of multiple copies of the very best breeding bulls to be let loose among the herds.

As a result, said Lewis, Australia was in the running to produce the world's first cloned dairy and beef cattle herds. "We can do agricultural things cheaper because of the nature of our agriculture." This would give Australian dairy and beef cattle producers an edge over competitors such as Argentina, he said.

Suzi, a black and white Holstein, was produced by joint research between the Monash University Institute of Reproduction and Development, Genetics Australia, the Victoria State Institute of Animal Science and the Dairy Research and Development Corp. The immediate aim is to produce higher protein milk from cloned cows, but the Monash group also plans to produce milk with pharmaceutical and special nutritional uses.

Cloned animals in the United States are already being produced which secrete pharmaceuticals in their milk. "The long-term implications for improving human health are enormous," Professor Alan Trounson, Deputy Director of the Monash Institute, said.

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Section  : Science & Tech