Mouse Non-Invasively Cloned from Drop of Blood in Japanese Lab

A mouse cloned from a single drop of blood grew up to live a normal lifespan and could give birth to live, normal offspring, according to researchers from Japan's Riken BioResource Center.

Cloning the mouse was an experiment to determine whether freshly collected peripheral - or circulating -- blood cells could be used successfully in somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique that can clone an animal from single cells.

This is not the first time a mouse has been cloned by SCNT; successful mouse clones have been made using several types of donor cells, including those takes from the liver, bone marrow and lymph nodes, according to the BBC. But cloning from peripheral cells is a more accessible and much less invasive option.

The goal of the study was to find a simple and non-invasive way of sourcing donor cells to clone valuable strains or laboratory mice.

Blood cells collected from the tail of a donor mouse were used to produce the clone. The donor mouse did not have to be euthanized after extracting the blood cells. 

"The present study clearly indicated that genetic copies of mice could be produced using a drop of peripheral blood from living donors," the study authors wrote in the abstract to their research. "This strategy will be applied to the rescue of infertile founder animals or a 'last-of-line' animal possessing invaluable genetic resources."

Dolly, the famed cloned sheep, was created using the SCNT method, which isolates white blood cells and transplants the nuclei within an unfertilized egg that has its nucleus removed to create a genetic clone.

(A quick animated tutorial of how SCNT works is here.) 

The Japanese research team said that their study "demonstrated for the first time that mice could be cloned using the nuclei of peripheral blood cells," according to the BCC.

Atsuo Ogura, the research leader Riken BioResource Center, and his colleagues reported their work in the journal Biology of Reproduction.