> Hi Brian,
> > 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
>> Interesting question. I sincerely hope someone is
> planning / attempting to find out how many P.D. Dolly's cells are
> capable of. The length of her telomeres would be easy enough to
> ascertain. Don't know if Dolly's `mother' is still alive, or
> whether tissue samples taken at the same time as the `Dolly-biopsy'
> were frozen, but if would be nice to find out if there is a
> difference in telomere length between mother and clone cells.
>> My guess is that in response to some maternal factor, or as a result
> of manipulations to Dolly's original adult nucleus, some basal
> embryonic expression pattern was re-established - including
> expression of telomerase. There does appear to be a telomere length
monitoring pathway (recent Nature paper) in cells capable of
expressing telomerase - I imagine it would correct for any
shortening detected...
> (?)
> MGB
