Her name is Utag Raider Mae Elite. Elite is one of Utah's first cloned calves.
Born in early July at Utah State University's Caine Dairy Teaching and Research Center, Elite is a one-of-a-kind Holstein now. But there are several more just like her waiting to be thawed, carried to term and delivered.Despite summer's "Jurassic Park" hype, cloning animals is not an everyday occurrence, but it is a painstaking procedure that has only left the realm of science fiction in the past 12 years. The births of three cloned mice announced in 1981 paved the way for other mam-mals to be cloned.
Kevin Rauchholz, foreman at the Caine Dairy, says Elite's mother is a daughter of Hanover Hill Triple Threat, a famous bull with American Breeders Service in the 1970s and '80s.
Rauchholz explains that the cow was treated with hormones to increase her egg production - a process known as superovulating - in June 1992. Eighteen eggs were obtained, their sexes determined and clones were made from the females.
Like calves born using embryo transfer, embryos are removed from a superior cow and then implanted in other cows. Cloning involves taking embryos made up of just a few cells and breaking them up into individual cells. The nuclei of each of those cells is then carefully put into other eggs that have had their nuclei removed.
It means creating genetic copies of the same individual.
Rauchholz says in a way, cloning means producing the same calf over and over again, but genetics is a complicated business, and the calves may or may not look alike since genes may express themselves differently.
In many cases, cloned calves have been larger than normal calves, but Elite was average weight at birth and is developing normally.
Cloning holds almost endless possibilities for researchers and producers, Rauchholz says. For example, being able to study animals that are exact genetic copies of each other should allow researchers to get more accurate information.
On the dairy farm, cloning could mean creating more, genetically superior offspring. A breeder could clone offspring from the highest-producing cows while other lower-producing cows carry the calves.