Biologists in Japan have cloned 581 mice from one original donor mouse, Livescience reported. The scientists made the mice over 25 generations of cloning; that is, from making clones from clones from clones, 25 times over.
根據(jù)Livescience的報(bào)道,日本生物學(xué)家用一只小鼠的基因供體克隆出581只小鼠。這些科學(xué)家們克隆了25代小鼠,即:用克隆鼠克隆新的小鼠,一共克隆了25次。

They could probably make animal clones indefinitely, the research team wrote in a paper published last week in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
研究團(tuán)隊(duì)在上周發(fā)表在《干細(xì)胞》期刊中的論文稱,他們很有可能會(huì)讓動(dòng)物無(wú)休無(wú)止地克隆下去。

Really. Check out the last sentence of their abstract: "Our results show that repeated iterative recloning is possible and suggest that, with adequately efficient techniques, it may be possible to reclone animals indefinitely."
是這樣嗎?我們來(lái)看看論文摘要的最后一句話:“我們的研究結(jié)果證明多代克隆是可能實(shí)現(xiàn)的。如果技術(shù)到位,那么克隆出無(wú)窮多代的動(dòng)物都是可能的。”

The 581 cloned mice were made using an improved version of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the technique that created Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996.
這581只小鼠是用改進(jìn)后的體細(xì)胞克隆技術(shù)克隆得到的,這一技術(shù)最早是在1996年克隆多莉時(shí)發(fā)明的。

Previously, researchers using somatic nuclear cell transfer would get fewer and fewer animals every time they tried to make a clone from a clone. Eventually, they wouldn't get any new clones at all. Cloned mammals also often died sooner than their non-cloned counterparts.
在此之前,運(yùn)用體細(xì)胞克隆技術(shù)反復(fù)克隆動(dòng)物時(shí),被克隆的動(dòng)物數(shù)量會(huì)越來(lái)越少,直到最終無(wú)法克隆出新動(dòng)物為止。被克隆出的哺乳動(dòng)物也會(huì)比非克隆的同類動(dòng)物死得更早。

The cloning team protected the mice's DNA from the genetic abnormalities they (the humans) think reduced the efficiency of previous cloning efforts. The researchers didn't lose any cloning efficiency over their 25 generations, they reported, and their cloned mice lived normal lifespans of about two years.
這支研究團(tuán)隊(duì)保護(hù)了小鼠的基因,使其不發(fā)生基因異常。他們認(rèn)為,基因異常正是降低克隆形成率的罪魁禍?zhǔn)?。研究者稱,這25代小鼠的克隆過(guò)程中克隆形成率并沒有降低,小鼠的壽命也很正常,約能生存兩年時(shí)間。

Cloning could help reproduce animals for farming or conservation, Sayaka Wakayama, a biologist at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology who led the cloning study, said in a statement.
日本理化研究所的生物學(xué)家若山清香是這次研究的負(fù)責(zé)人,他在一個(gè)聲明中提到,克隆技術(shù)可以繁殖動(dòng)物,為農(nóng)業(yè)和動(dòng)物保護(hù)服務(wù)。

This isn't the first time Wakayama has made some big strides in cloning. He previously cloned mice from bodies of mice that had been frozen for 16 years.
這已經(jīng)不是若山清香在克隆技術(shù)上的第一個(gè)重大成就了。此前他曾經(jīng)以一只冰凍了16年的小鼠為供體克隆出了一只小鼠。