May 30, 2003 Feature Story
Utah
State University and University of Idaho Team First to Clone
Mule
News
Note Update: Due to the upcoming birth of a second cloned mule,
Ken White's appearance on NBC's Today
show has been rescheduled for Monday, June 9.
 A
University of Idaho-Utah State University research team was
the first worldwide to clone a member of the horse family, a
mule, according to a paper published online by the journal Science.
The research team included Gordon Woods, UI professor of animal
and veterinary science, Kenneth L. White, Utah State University
professor of animal science, and Dirk Vanderwall, UI assistant
professor of animal and veterinary science.
The baby mule, Idaho Gem, was born May 4. It is the first clone
of a hybrid animal. A mule results from a cross between a female
horse, a mare, and a male donkey, a jack. As hybrids, mules
are sterile, except in extremely rare cases.
Veterinary examinations of the foal and its surrogate mother
showed them to be in good health, Woods said. The foal romped
with its surrogate mother during a news conference on the UI
campus to announce its birth.
The DNA comes from a fetal cell culture first established in
1998 at the University of Idaho.
As scientifically and commercially significant as their accomplishment
is for the horse industry, Woods said he is most excited because
the project provides a new animal model, the horse, to advance
understanding of human cancer.
Woods believes the breakthrough understanding of cellular biology
necessary for horse cloning to proceed may offer new insights
into cancer development in people.
Woods, UI professor of animal and veterinary science, began
working on the cloning project five years ago in 1998. As director
of the Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory on the UI Moscow
campus, he has spent much of his career studying horse-breeding
issues.
Horses present a large challenge to those who would use advanced
technology to assist them. Only two "test-tube" horse
foals, babies conceived in a test tube, resulted from in vitro
fertilization experiments worldwide.
The mule clone born in May is the full sibling of a champion
racing mule owned by Idaho businessman, UI benefactor and mule
enthusiast Don Jacklin of Post Falls.
The team's success is expected to attract widespread interest.
Its paper will be published at the Science Express
Web site, on Thursday, May 29, at www.sciencexpress.org
and also http://www.aaas.org.
Science and Science Express are published
by the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
the world's largest general scientific organization."
For three years, from 1998 to 2000, the team worked without
apparent success. After transferring the nuclei from the mule
cells into 134 horse eggs and implanting them into mares, two
apparently "false pregnancies" resulted, but both
failed to proceed past four weeks.
In 2001, the team began to focus on the calcium levels in the
fluid surrounding the eggs during the cloning procedure. The
change led to the first fetal heart beat, signifying the team
had crossed a significant hurdle in the experiment. That year,
researchers transferred 84 eggs, establishing five apparent
pregnancies.
"The results were impressive and immediate," Woods
said. The first change led to a significant advance in the development
of cloned embryos.
In 2002, Woods, White and Vanderwall continued to adjust the
calcium levels in the fluid surrounding the egg during the cloning
procedure. That change dramatically increased the team's success.
The team established 14 pregnancies using mule DNA in 113 attempts.
Eight of the pregnancies continued to at least the 40-day stage
when heartbeats were detected.
To test whether mule DNA could be limiting success, the team
also made 61 attempts to use horse DNA. The test resulted in
seven apparent pregnancies, two of which developed heartbeats.
Neither of the horse clone pregnancies developed past the critical
60-day threshhold, however.
The UI-Utah State team is the first to succeed among several
worldwide attempting to clone a member of the horse family.
The 2002 preliminary testing showed the method developed by
the researchers to successfully clone a mule should work equally
as well with a horse, Woods said.
"It basically came down to a matter of numbers and we wanted
to focus most of our attention on cloning a mule, which was
our original objective," Vanderwall said.
White is widely recognized as an expert on cattle cloning and
brought cloning expertise to the team. Vanderwall, who like
Woods, earned his doctor of veterinary medicine and Ph.D. degrees,
brought extensive clinical expertise to the team.
Woods had taken an interest in basic horse physiology after
becoming intrigued by the observation that stallions, male horses,
do not develop prostate cancer.
The horse's basic metabolism is "slow" compared to
humans and many other mammals, Woods said. He speculated that
difference in cellular activity might play a role in both cancer
development and reproduction.
He formed an outside company, CancEr2, to investigate that observation
with the backing of private investors. The studies showed a
fundamental difference between men and stallions in the calcium
concentrations within the cells and surrounding fluid.
Jacklin and Woods formed another company, ClonE2 to offer horse
cloning services commercially.
Woods said the UI-Utah State team will explore other lines of
scientific inquiry opened by this year's success.
Four releases providing more information about this story are
available. They are titled "The
Basics of Cloning"; "To
Clone A Mule: History Offers A Mixed Message"; "Mule
Racing Enthusiast Played Major Role In Research"; and
"Kenneth White Biographical
Information."
Contact: Kenneth White, (435) 797-2149, kwhite@cc.usu.edu
John Devilbiss, (435) 797-1358, john.devilbiss@usu.edu
Whitney Wilkinson, (435) 797-1429, whitney.wilkinson@usu.edu
Writer: Kathy Barnard & Bill Loftus, (208) 885-6291, kbarnard@uidaho.edu
or blouftus@uidaho.edu
utah state today/archives/May
2003/archives
prior to Sept 2002/
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