In 1997, the world got to meet
sheep Dolly, the first
mammal to be
cloned from a
cell from an already full-grown sheep.
With the process of the creation of Dolly, three sheep were involved. From the first ewe a cell was taken, of which the genes got removed. Thereupon DNA was extracted from a cell from a second ewe and the two cells were merged. Once the embryo developed, it was implanted in a third sheep, who carried the embryo till Dolly was born.
Dolly lived a short life: she was slaughtered after she got pneumonia in February 2003. Normally sheep reach the age of eleven or twelve: her early death once again rose the question whether cloning speeds up the aging process.