ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, March 7, 1996                TAG: 9603080001
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RICK WEISS THE WASHINGTON POST 

IDENTICAL SHEEP? NOT JUST IN DREAMS

RESEARCHERS ARE having some success with producing genetically engineered animals for uses including in human transplants.

The endless stream of identical sheep envisioned by insomniacs just became a lot more real. Researchers in Scotland have developed a technique for cloning unlimited numbers of genetically indistinguishable sheep.

Only five identical lambs have been created so far, and three died in the first days of life. But scientists said the success could open the door to mass production of gene-altered animals with desirable traits, such as sheep with better wool or pigs with ``humanized'' organs suitable for transplantation into people.

In theory, researchers said, the technique also could be used to clone human embryos. Legal restrictions preclude such experiments on embryos in the United Kingdom, and in this country, federal funding cannot be used to support such research. No one has yet discovered how to make duplicates of adults from individual cells.

``It's very impressive,'' said David White, a lecturer at Cambridge University in England and co-founder of Imutran, a British biotechnology company that is developing genetically engineered animals. ``It's a big advance.''

For years, scientists have been creating lines of genetically identical laboratory animals such as mice and rabbits by tinkering with embryo cells in laboratory dishes. But the technique often fails and is only partially complete after one generation, requiring additional work to get the desired trait established in a second generation. Most important, it has never worked in larger animals such as sheep or pigs.

Keith H.S. Campbell, Ian Wilmut and their colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh describe their approach to cloning animals in today's issue of the journal Nature.

LENGTH: Short :   44 lines
ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC:  Chart by AP: Counting sheep.