Dolly the sheep at 30: The clone that changed science (and celebrity petdom)

She may have started life in a petri dish and simply known as 6LL3, but thanks to her amazing contribution to science, Dolly the sheep went on to become one of the most famous farm animals in the world after being the first mammal ever to be cloned from adult DNA.

The little milennial lamb was born via a surrogate mother at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Institute on 5 July, 1996 – with huge implications on medicine, culture and the ethical issues around cloning. 

The team, led by Professors Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, cloned Dolly from a single mammary gland cell from a Finn Dorset sheep, using a process where the nucleus from a donor egg is injected into a nucleus-free cell, creating an embryo genetically identical to the donor.

Named after Country legend Dolly Parton, who used to just as famous for her 40DD breasts as her singing career, their experiment proved that a clone could be made from adult somatic cells, not just from embryonic ones as previously believed.

However, Dolly was kept hidden for months, until the story was eventually broken by The Observer in February 1997 – and a media frenzy ensued. 

Dolly-mania

‘By Monday the car park at the Roslin Institute was full of vans with dishes,’ embryologist William Ritchie tells Metro. ‘People had flown in from America in 24 hours to get the story.’

Working at Institue at the time, he had joined as a large-animal anesthetist before becoming an embryologist at the facility, where he still works.

‘I actually saw Dolly being born,’ William adds. ‘It’s very seldom thing to see as they’re often born at night.’

Unfazed by the press blizzard, Dolly took to standing at the front of the pen to greet visitors and developed a fondness for edible gifts – a habit William says made her a little plump.

‘She was a real madam – if you didn’t bring something to eat, she’d turn her back on you,’ he recalls. ‘If an animal ever deserved to be an icon, it was really Dolly.’

William’s wife, Marjorie, was an animal researcher and animal surgeon, and also a vital part of the pioneering team at the Insitute. When she developed multiple sclerosis, her husband would to take her down to the facility to see Dolly and the other animals on the site.

While the public was captivated, the reaction in the political and scientific community was more mixed – several renowned scientists at the time doubted that she’d really been cloned from an adult cell, a feat previously thought impossible. 

Dolly’s arrival also agitated ethical debate aroud the potential dawn of human cloning, with Bill Clinton asking Congress for a ban on the use of federal funds for human cloning just days after the news broke – although no such attempts have been made since.

However, the Roslin Institute’s goal was never to to move toward human clones, but to use their findings to help study and treat disease. In fact, cloning is no longer practiced at the Institute.

Following the herd

Dolly may have been the first animal cloned from an adult cell, but she certainly wasn’t the last – either in the name of science and agriculture, or pet resurrection.

Cloning of horses for racing and polo has since become well documented, while commercial cloning for bereaved, deep-pocketed pet owners has seen some success, notably in South Korea with the first dog, Snuppy.

In America, the foundations for commercial pet cloning were laid in 2001 at Texas A&M University, where researchers made CC – initials for ‘CopyCat’. The first commercially-cloned feline in the state soon followed, a Maine Coone named Little Nicky.

Today, Texan firm ViaGen Pets offers bereaved pet owners with $50,000 spare the chance to clone their cats and dogs, with horses priced at $85,000.

The company counts Hollywood A-listers as clients – Barabara Streisand’s two pups, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett are clones of her Coton de Tulear dog Sammie, who died in 2017. 

ViaGen also cloned Paris Hilton’s chihuahua, Diamond Baby, after it went missing in 2022, using stem cells that had been harvested when the dog was spayed. In a nod to her pet, the socialite called her new clones Diamond and Baby.

However, William warns that anyone hoping to bring their furry friends back this way probably won’t get the desired result, as there’s a good chance the clone won’t behave or look like it’s host.

Dolly’s legacy

Celeb pet cloning aside, 30 years on from Dolly, Wilmut and Campbell – who have both since died – and their teams achieved something that has had a profound impact on human stem cell research.

Her birth led to Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka’s discovery that similar techniques could be applied to essentially reverse-age adult cells back into pluripotent stem cells, a type of stem cell only found in embryos. This breakthrough won him the Nobel prize in 2012. 

Stem cells are like blank slates which can differentiate into various types of cells, with embryonic stem cells having the highest number of potential pathways. 

Although we haven’t yet reached a world where Yamanaka’s induced pluripotent stem cells are used directly to treat disease, they are the main type of stem cell used in research.

His work, he’s admitted, would have never come about if it weren’t for Dolly, who passed away in 2003. 

Today, she can be found at the National Museum of Scotland, where museum curator Dr Andrew Kitchener says a taxidermied Dolly remains one of the Edinburgh museum’s highlights. 

‘You see lots of people queuing up on occasion to take selfies with her – although they’ve got to be quick as her display case rotates,’ he tells Metro.

‘People are often asking: ‘is that really her?’’

Kitchener was in touch with the Roslin Institute during Dolly’s lifetime to devise a plan to have her memorialised at the museum. Unsure of how long a cloned mammal like her might survive, Dr Kitchener had two taxidermists on call in case Dolly died outside of working hours.

And she did – late on a Friday afternoon on the 14th Febuary 2003, the sheep died from tumors caused by a lung infection aged six. 

Despite speculation that her premature death might have been due to the cloning, no evidence was found to support this – the lung disease she contrcated was common among sheep kept mostly indoors, as Dolly was.

She gave birth to six healthy lambs during her life with a mountain sheep called David, and suffered a bout of arthritis which was successfully treated. 

After she had been preserved, Dolly arrived at the museum to what Dr Kitchener described as ‘an absolute storm of press and media’ and remains a museum celebrity to this day. She can be found in a glass case, rotating on a turntable in the Science and Technology galleries.

‘Dolly’s always going to be one of the most popular exhibits whether or not the technology continues – she was a first, and people like to see a first.’