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BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai scientists said they were in the process of cloning dwindling water buffaloes after successfully delivering a cloned cow last month.
The "kwai plak," or water buffalo, was chosen after experts warned the number of the beasts – the icon of traditional Thai rice farming – was fast declining. "We have successfully produced a water buffalo embryo from skin from a fetus," said Rangsan Parnpai, a researcher at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Veterinary Science.
Scientists at the university reportedly delivered a calf cloned from an adult cow's ear cells last month, putting Thailand at the forefront of cloning technology in Southeast Asia. Rangsan said the team of experts was now seeking a suitable surrogate mother to carry the embryo for the required 310-320 days until birth. He said the embryo was produced some six months ago and was being stored in a frozen state.
There were more than six million water buffaloes working Thailand's rice fields in the early 1980s, but only 1.2 million remain, replaced by motorized ploughs, which Thais call "kwai leek" or iron buffaloes.
The world's first mammal to be cloned from an adult animal was "Dolly," a sheep born in Scotland in 1997. Japanese researchers produced the first cloned calf in July 1998 at a livestock center in Ishikawa prefecture.
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