• @catty@lemmy.world
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    223 hours ago

    Wasn’t CRISPR used to clone Dolly the sheep that had a very short lifespan? Aren’t there better editing techniques than it? Didn’t we learn that there seems to be a huge checksum in the DNA and if something changes somewhere, the checksum doesn’t add up and things go… well, dead.

    • @MrConfusion@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      No, CRISPR has little to do with Dolly the sheep. Dolly was born in 1996. While CRISPR saw some fundamental research from 1993-2005 it wasn’t used for gene editing untill 2012 and was named breakthrough of the year in 2015.

      Dolly did not have a very short lifespan. She lived for six years and was eventually put down to a lung disease that has no connection to her cloning.

      The wikipedia page has details and citations, I will only quote the relevant paragraph here:

      Dolly lived at the Roslin Institute throughout her life and produced several lambs.[5] She was euthanized at the age of six years due to a progressive lung disease. No cause which linked the disease to her cloning was found.[6]

      It is better to either do some basic research before making direct claims or ask more open questions. Stating wildly erroneous things is sowing disinformation, and putting a question mark at the end is not a very good loophole. You are actively spreading misinformation.