What happened to Dolly the sheep? How long the first cloned adult mammal lived, and her legacy explained – iNews

Just over 25 years ago Dolly the sheep was born into a media frenzy.

The woolly beast proved that animals could be cloned, and opened up a lot of possibilities in biology and medicine.

She is to feature in a BBC documentary that will explore the impact Dolly had. Heres everything you need to know about Dolly the sheep.

She was announced to the world on 22February 1997, to a frenzy of media attention, and she lived from 1996 to 2003.

She was the result of an experiment at The Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, by a team led by Professor Sir Ian Wilmut.

The University of Edinburgh said: Dolly was cloned from a cell taken from the mammary gland of a six-year-old Finn Dorset sheep and an egg cell taken from a Scottish Blackface sheep.

Dollys white face was one of the first signs that she was a clone, because if she was genetically related to her surrogate mother, she would have had a black face.

Because Dollys DNA came from a mammary gland cell, she was named after the country singer Dolly Parton.

Dolly lived at The Roslin Institute and led a normal life with the other sheep, apart from a few media appearances.

She had six lambs with a Welsh Mountain ram called David, and sadly died after contracting a virus called the Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus (JSRV), which causes lung cancer in the animals. She was on euthanised on 14 February 2003.

The Roslin Institute said that after her death it donated Dollys body to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she has become one of the museums most popular exhibits.

Dolly is back on display in the museum after an extensive gallery refurbishment, alongside an interactive exhibit on the ethics of creating transgenic animals featuring current research from The Roslin Institute.

After cloning Dolly, Professor Ian Wilmut used the knowledge gained to make stem cells which could be used in regenerative medicine. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2005 and became the first director of the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine in 2006.

The Roslin Institute said: Dollys birth proved that scientists could turn back the clock on a fully developed adult cell to make it behave like a cell from a newly fertilised embryo, and this encouraged researchers in Edinburgh and across the world to investigate other techniques to reprogram adult cells, ultimately leading to the discovery of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells.

Pluripotent stem cells are able to potentially produce any cell or tissue the body needs to repair itself, and have multiple uses in medicine.

The BBC synopsis says: The story of the scientists who created Dolly, the sheep that changed the world.

This documentary tells the full story for the first time with never-before-seen archive, revealing how on a small Scottish farm, a handful of the worlds best genetic scientists worked in secret to crack the holy grail of life: cloning.

The story, when it broke, caused a moral panic to sweep the world. But how did it happen? Who was behind it? What was the science? And, ultimately, what is Dollys legacy today?

The documentary is on at 9pm on Wednesday 8 December on BBC Two. It will also be available on BBC iPlayer.

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What happened to Dolly the sheep? How long the first cloned adult mammal lived, and her legacy explained - iNews