Scientist on mission to clone endangered pandas
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China has been exploring every possible means of saving giant pandas, one of the world's most endangered species, from becoming extinct, even if it means resorting to cloning them.
Chen Dayuan, a senior scientist who specializes in cloning at the institute of zoology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced the idea of performing cloning techniques on giant pandas in 1998.
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Giant panda Gege tends to her new female cub on Monday, following six hours of labor at the China Panda Preservation Research Center in Wolong, Sichuan province. |
Using initial funding of 100,000 yuan ($14,780), Chen successfully produced blastocysts by transplanting the somatic nucleus from sample pandas into the enucleated egg cells of rabbits, the Beijing Morning Post reported on Thursday.
The move was reported as one of the 10 biggest achievements of science and technology in 1999. It won an award of 6 million yuan and further funding of 5 million yuan for the project from the Ministry of Science and Technology.
According to the report, two embryos were created from a surrogate mother cat who became pregnant after being injected with a blastocyst, but the experiment was abandoned after the cat died of pneumonia.
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