Carbon Chemist

Tag: cloning

  • The US Has a Cloned Sheep Contraband Problem

    The US Has a Cloned Sheep Contraband Problem

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    In September, a man from Montana was sentenced to six months in prison after he trafficked a clone of one of the world’s largest sheep species. Court documents allege that Arthur Schubarth trafficked body parts of a near threatened Marco Polo argali sheep into the US from Kyrgyzstan and in 2015 contracted with a lab to create a cloned sheep he later named Montana Mountain King (MMK). Later, the documents allege, Schubarth used MMK’s semen to impregnate ewes and then sold offspring—each carrying some Marco Polo argali genetics—to people involved in big game hunting.

    It’s a weird case. It’s likely only the second time that an American has been prosecuted for a wildlife crime that involved animal cloning. (In 2011 a man was fined $1.5 million and ordered to surrender smuggled deer as well as nearly $1 million of deer semen—which investigators believed he intended to use to clone whitetail deer—in a case that involved the unlawful purchase and transportation of deer.)

    There’s another strange element to Schubarth’s story: Potentially dozens of MMK’s descendants may now be at large in the US. These sheep that contain genetics from MMK are defined as contraband in the handful of plea agreements that were signed by men who were alleged to have bought sheep from Schubarth or transported ewes to his ranch in Montana to be impregnated. What isn’t clear is how many sheep are at large, and what exactly has happened to them.

    However, legal documents offer some clues. One legal filing in the case against Schubarth alleges that in November 2018 one person transported 26 ewes to Schubarth’s ranch in Montana to be inseminated with MMK semen, and a year later the same person later transported another 48 ewes. In July 2020, the same document alleges, two other people transported another 43 sheep to Schubarth’s ranch. That’s at least several dozen sheep that may have carried MMK’s offspring—and each of those may have had several lambs.

    The same document also alleges that one of MMK’s offspring was transported from Minnesota to Schubarth’s ranch in Montana in May 2019. Then in July 2020 Schubarth agreed to sell 11 of MMK’s grandchildren for a total of $13,200 and one of MMK’s children, a sheep called Montana Black Magic, for $10,000. It’s also alleged that Schubarth sold another Marco Polo hybrid sheep to a man who lives in South Dakota.

    At least one sheep is accounted for: MMK himself. The sheep had initially been taken to a Zoological Association of America accredited facility in Oregon, says Christina Meister of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Office of Public Affairs. On October 2, MMK was flown across the country to Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, where he will be housed for the long term. MMK is expected to be on exhibition at the zoo in mid-November, Meister says. (The USFWS declined to answer other questions posed by WIRED.)

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  • Thousands of People Are Cloning Their Dead Pets. This Is the Woman They Call First

    Thousands of People Are Cloning Their Dead Pets. This Is the Woman They Call First

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    Nine years ago, a pair of freshly weaned British longhair kittens boarded a private plane in Virginia and flew to their new home in Europe. These kittens were no different than any other, except that they’d been created in a lab. They were clones: genetically identical to their predecessor, now sadly deceased.

    It had taken seven months and cost $50,000, but that cat was one of the first pets to be commercially cloned in the United States. Since then, a couple thousand dog, cat, and horse clones have followed, and every year the waiting list grows longer. Of course it does. Haven’t you ever wished your pet could live, if not forever, then at least as long as you? Now it can, sort of.

    WIRED spoke to a longtime customer service manager for the largest commercial pet cloning company. She guides pet owners through the entire process, from when they send in a piece of the old pet to when they meet—remeet?—the new one.

    Half of our clients come to us after their pet has passed away. They’re mourning. They’re trying to figure out a way to cope with the grief, so they Google “What do you do when your pet passes?” That’s when they stumble across us, and I’m often the first person they talk to. There’s a lot of emotion. I’m happy to hold their hand through the process, because when a pet dies, especially if it’s sudden, many people are not thinking straight. Postmortem, things have to be done very quickly.

    After a pet has passed, the cells are viable for about five days. The body has to be refrigerated, but not frozen, because freezing damages the cells. Typically we would want a piece of the ear from the deceased pet. The ear tissue is hardy; it works very well. People don’t want to think about their pet missing part of their ear, so that is sometimes a struggle.

    Once the sample is at the lab, the first step is to grow cells in culture from the tissue, then freeze and store those cells. When everyone is ready to move forward with cloning, we transfer some of those cells to our cloning lab in upstate New York.

    The cloning begins with making embryos from the cells. We take a donor egg, remove the nucleus, and insert one of the millions of cells that we’ve grown. There’s an electric stimulus that basically tricks the egg into thinking it’s been fertilized, but there’s no sperm. That’s the magic of cloning. It takes a lot of skill and good hand-eye coordination.

    The lab will create several embryos, then they transfer those embryos into one of our surrogate dogs or cats, which are specifically bred to be great mothers. Within a few tries, we’ll have a puppy or a kitten. Sometimes more than one puppy or kitten, because when we transfer the embryos into the surrogate, it’s kind of like IVF—more than one might take. If two or three puppies are born, the client would get them all. On rare occasions we have a client who only wants one, so then we help place the extra. A lot of times it goes to an employee here. Almost every one of our employees has a cloned animal.

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