Illegal Sheep Cloning and Breeding
Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, an 81-year-old breeder in Montana has been jailed for six months for cloning the world’s largest sheep from Kyrgyzstan(Marco Polo argali sheep) and selling its offspring at high prices for trophy hunting.
It is reported that the semen from the cloned sheep was used to artificially breed more ewes, all to breed a more valuable sheep species. One of those offspring sold for $10,000.
But how was the sheep cloned? Typically, reproduction requires an egg from a female and sperm from a male. However, this method does not result in an identical offspring.
The breeder sent the genetic material to a lab to create cloned embryos. In the lab, they probably used somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). This technique can produce embryos that are genetically identical to the donor animal without fertilization. Dolly the sheep was born this way.
In SCNT, the nucleus of a somatic cell from an adult organism is inserted into an egg cell that had its own nucleus removed. You can take a somatic cell from almost any part of the body, as long as the cell contains a complete set of DNA. The important part is that the cell used contains a healthy, intact nucleus with the complete DNA sequence of the organism you wish to clone.
From Wikipedia.
Once you have the egg with the nucleus of the donor, you stimulate the egg to begin development. Then the resulting embryo is implanted into a surrogate mother, leading to the birth of a genetically identical clone of the original organism like Dolly.
The breeder paid only $4,200 to the lab. It’s astonishing that a breeder can clone a rare sheep for profit with such a small amount. I believe this story marks the beginning of illegal genetic engineering practices. As gene engineering becomes more accessible, we can expect to see more illegal activities like this in the future.