On 18 Mar 1997, Longevity-Digest/Brian Rowley wrote:
> Your arguments make a lot of sense. I'd like to know, though, were
> Dolly's telomeres (or Hayflick divisions) restored to those of a newborn
> lamb? It would be easy to find that out; just compare number of remaining
> divisions (and length of telomeres) of sheep progenitor with that of lamb
> clone. If the telomeres and remaining divisions were restored by cloning
> that would imply that rejuvenation of adult cells is possible.
> Brian Rowley
There seem to be two possibilities:
1) The early embryo has some telomerase activity which restores the
telomeres. This would mean that adult cells could be rejuvenated in their
telomeres.
2) The cell that the successful clone was derived from had long telomeres
and that was why it was able to be cloned. Some stem cells in adults have
detectable telomerase activity and it is quite possible that the cell that
Dolly arose from was one of these and therefore is a relatively "rare"
occurence.
Duane Hewitt
Immortality, Inc.
http://immortality.org
