Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Copy Cat Copied

Well, sort of.

I could not resist:

copy cat copies

These are the kittens of Copy Cat, the cat that was cloned back in 2001/2 at Texas A&M. They’re lovely. They were produced the old-fashioned way with a father who was also produced the old-fashioned way. Here’s an article about it.

copy catcopy cat rainbowDo you remember CC? To the right is one of the pictures that was going around when she was first introduced to the world, and to the left is one of her a little over a year after she was born, with Rainbow, the cat of which she is a genetic copy. No, they don’t look exactly alike. Nor do they behave alike, in fact. Their personalities are very different. Evidently their bodies are using the same DNA in different ways. Here’s an article about that. [Update: This is a good opportunity to point out that there's indeed a lot more to biology and genetics than just DNA... How does one get from the DNA to a complicated final organism? What are the mechnisms involved? That's a hugely important area called Development. Yvette in the comments brings up an aspect of this when remarking upon the origins of calico patterning in (mostly female, rarely male - because of a battle between two X-chromosomes) cat coats.]

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