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Endangered animal from India cloned

T V Parasuram in Washington

Scientists have successfully cloned an endangered species of wildlife found only in the bamboo jungles of India and Burma -- the humpbacked, heavily muscled Asian gaur, reports said.

Scientists in Massachusetts cloned the endangered species and planted the foetus in the uterus of a cow, named Bessie, which will become the surrogate mother, the Cloning journal reported.

The clone has been named Noah and Scientific American will publish the report soon.

If the experiment succeeds, other endangered species may be cloned, including perhaps the Washington National Zoo's two pandas, Ling-Ling, which died in 1992, and Hsing-Hsing, which died in 1999. Their cells have been preserved in liquid nitrogen.

Later this year, the scientists intend to clone a species of Spanish mountain goat. The last known of the species died nine months ago, but some of that goat's cells have been preserved. If scientists manage to clone new goats from those cells, they will have accomplished the world's first 'resurrection'.

The Washington Post noted: "Extinction, it seems, may not be forever after all."

"It is not science fiction. It is real," said Robert Lanza, vice-president of Medical and Scientific Development at Advanced Cell Technology, the Worcester, Massachusetts, company behind the cloning practice.

Lanza said: "One hundred species are lost every day, and these mass extinctions are mostly our own doing. Now that we have the technology to reverse that, I think we have the responsibility."

PTI

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