Mice Cloned From Skin Cells

A group of American scientists succeeded in cloning mice from mice skin cells for the first time.

Researchers at Rockefeller Institute, with the help of their colleagues from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, arrived at this discovery with the aid of keratinocytes, i.e. stem cells of the skin that are easily accessible.

In this way, they may be able to create embryos which could be used as a source of stem cells, note the researchers in an article published in the medical journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The cloned mice are created out of unfertilized egg cells, the nuclei of which were replaced with keratinocyte nuclei.

In proper conditions, embryonic stem cells can develop into any kind of body tissue and thus help cure different kinds of diseases.

Owing to this discovery, scientists believe that, in the future, embryonic stem cells could be created out of the patient's skin stem cells, reports BBC News.