Archive for the ‘Clones’ Category

Scientists Clone 600 Mice from Single Drop of Blood

Sunday, June 30th, 2013

Since mice aren’t really a nuisance to anyone…600 copies of a single mouse have been created from a single drop of the donor mouse’s blood.

Taking the blood from the tail of a donor mouse, a team of scientists in Japan isolated the white blood cells and used the nuclei for the cloning process.

The process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves transferring the nucleus from an adult body cell – such as a blood or skin cell – into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed.

The point of the experiments was to see if circulating blood cells could be used to create an easily available source of donor cells to create valuable strains of lab mice.

After 25 rounds and 600 clones? We’re pretty sure they can stop wondering if it would work.

[BBC News]

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‘Clone Factory’ Prints Eerily Realistic 3D Dolls of YOU!

Thursday, June 13th, 2013

Akhibara, Japan is the place to go to get just about anything you want in life…even if that anything includes wanting a creepy doll-like clone of yourself.

Recently a company called “Clone Factory” opened which now allows you to not only have a 3D-printed doll-head of your own mug but your pets as well.

Using several DSLR cameras, Clone Factory captures your face from different angles, puts it all together in the computer, prints it and hands you a bill for $1,300 US bucks.

Clone Factory uses one of the most advanced 3D printers (made by ZCorp) on the market to print out these plastic little mini-selfs of its customers. Disney recently used these same printers during their annual Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World where guests could either have their likeness frozen in a slab of carbonite or put onto the body of a Stormtrooper (complete with detachable helmet).

Most of Clone Factory’s customers are actually women. Not only do the women seek to preserve how they look on special days like their weddings, they also have the exact outfits they’re wearing at the time as well as their hair and make-up recreated as well.

Which doesn’t make any of this any less creepy.
[DesignTaxi]

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Woolly Mammoths By 2015?

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

One man is on a mission to bring woolly mammoths back from the dead. A technique for successfully recovering frozen cells to use in creating clones was pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology.  Now Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, plans to use the results in a quest to bring the woolly mammoth back to life.

“Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

Professor Iritani estimates about 2 years to successfully implant an embryo into an elephant, followed by a 600-day gestation period.  He will be travelling to Siberia this summer in search of specimens.

[The Telegraph]

Posted in Clones, Mammoth | 3 Comments »

Donate Your DNA Now So Your Clone Can Colonize Space Tomorrow

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

We are nearly positive that this super creepy infomercial for the Synthetic Somatology program of Gemini Somatics is viral marketing for some upcoming video game / movie. Still, it’s pretty well done and represents a fun mystery for you, the readers of this fine blog.

Even if there isn’t a real program soliciting your DNA so you can be the Jango Fett to the Clone Troopers of the future, it’s a fun hypothetical to kick around. Would you do it?

Thanks to Weird Things reader Lisa for passing this along.

Posted in Clones | 4 Comments »