The world's first cloned cow, Kaga, died naturally and lived past the average lifespan

According to the British "Daily Mail" reported on the 11th, this Wednesday, the world's first cloned cow "Kaga" died naturally at the Institute of Japan, at the age of 21. His twin sister "Noto" died in May last year.

The average lifespan of a cow is 20 years, and neither cow suffered serious health problems because they were cloned, which is a scientific breakthrough.

The Kaga and Noto cows were born in July 1998, after the world's first successfully cloned animal, the sheep Dolly, was born in 1996 and died in 2003.

In 2000, the twins both managed to give birth to healthy calves, becoming the first cloned calves to be born.

Kaga and Noto are the only two remaining 8 cloned embryos from the same cow, the original DNA material extracted from the slaughterhouse and cloned by somatic nuclear transfer. In this technique, the genetic information within an unfertilized egg is replaced by DNA from adult somatic cells.

For the previous month, Kaga had been suffering from health problems, struggling to get up and taking anti-inflammatory drips on his legs.

The 14 cows raised at the Ishikawa Research Center were the first cloned cattle in Japan. Scientists want to see how long Kaga and Noto survive naturally, so they weren't slaughtered.

The cloning project was a study conducted jointly by the Ishikawa Research Center and Kimyo University in Higashi-Osaka, Japan. Professor Yukio Kakuda of University in Nara City, Japan, initially led the Clone Cattle Project, with the goal of breeding particularly lucrative cloned cattle with high milk and beef yields.

(Editor: ZLQ)