Dolly the sheep
An adult cell is reprogrammed to make a whole animal.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Dolly is born in July 1996 from a mammary gland cell of an adult ewe, demonstrating that differentiated cells retain all the genetic information needed to build an organism and can be reset. It was thought impossible. The technique led to induced pluripotent stem cells and to serious ethical debate about human cloning, which remains prohibited essentially everywhere.