Blast from the past
Cloning success
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Blast from the past
As matter began to form after the Big Bang light was released and as the Universe expanded the wavelengths of this light was stretched out . Astronomers can now detect this stretched out light as microwave radiation . The European space Agency ’ s Planck space telescope has been recording this radiation and mapping out its distribution . Data collected over a year and a half of observations has now been combined into an image that shows some of the oldest light was created just 380,000 years after the Big Bang .
Cloning success
OnE of the biggest problems with cloning has been that the clones do not have perfect health . Researchers at the RIKEn Centre for Biology in Kobe have discovered that this problem can be solved by eliminating genetic changes that normally occur from generation to generation . Until quite recently it was thought that genes passed on without much or any change , but now it is known that they can , in effect , be tagged so that their expression becomes modified . These are termed epigenetic
The small fluctuations correspond to regions where matter began to condense and star formation began . scientists are excited by this charting of ancient light because it reveals a great deal about what the early Universe was like . The picture that emerged from this mapping reveals that some of our assumptions about the early Universe were incorrect . The distribution of radiation turns out to be uneven rather than much the same in all directions with a broad band of older ( colder ) radiation stretching across from one side to the other . Earlier observations had hinted that such asymmetry might exist , but this
changes , and they have a big influence on how animals , including outselves , take shape .
In a cloning experiment with mice the Japanese researchers lead by Dr
more comprehensive mapping has shown that it is a major feature , showing that the Universe is not as uniform as previously thought .
The Planck observations have also made scientists revise some of their estimate on the make up of the Universe and its age . The age has been pushed back by about 50 million years , making the Universe 13.82 billion years old . There appears to be slightly more matter than previously thought , and less of the mysterious “ dark energy ” that is thought to be causing the Universe to be drawn out at an ever accelerating rate .
Teruhiko Wakayama , used an inhibitor , trichostatin , to prevent the epigenetic changes occurring . The cloned mice were not alone healthy , but they could in turn be cloned to produce another healthy generation of clones . After repeating the cloning procedure 25 times , the 581 mice remained healthy , they had a normal lifespan of two years and they remained fertile , giving rise to healthy offspring .
In contrast to this , repeated cloning of mammals up to this had always resulted in an accumulation of abnormalities .
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 9