‘Helping the process:’ Dubai camel cloning caters to racing, beauty pageants
Camel replication is a big business in the Gulf region where the humped animals are cherished and can earn huge sums in races and beauty contests
Having led the world’s first cloning of camels in 2009, the Reproductive Biotechnology Center in Dubai works to preserve the cells of and reproduce elite racing camels, beauty contest winners, milking camels, and prized males.
Nisar Wani, originally a veterinarian who has a Ph.D. in animal reproduction, told Reuters he is now replicating a few dozen camels a year in the lab – a big business in the Gulf region where camels are cherished and can earn huge sums in races and beauty contests.
"We collect these eggs from the ovaries of slaughtered animals. We have to mature them in the lab for 24 hours before they reach the stage where we can use them for the cloning process," Wani said.
Reproductive cloning of animals uses a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. DNA is removed from a camel egg cell and replaced with DNA from a frozen body cell of a camel prized for some quality such as speed or beauty. The egg then develops into an embryo with no sperm needed.
But the process is time-consuming with a low success rate.
"From a hundred embryos that we transfer, we can have five to ten pregnancies, and sometimes maybe three to six babies born," Wani noted.
The lab Wani works in also uses interspecies cloning technology to preserve threatened species. For example, it has cloned critically endangered, double-humped wild Bactrian camels using the eggs and surrogate mothers of single-humped camels.
"In cloning, we are not doing anything new. God has created all the material. God has created the cells, we are only helping the process," Wani said, adding it was one of a number of assisted reproductive technology techniques.