A somatically cloned calf was born at midnight March 18th by Caesarean section in the Changping experimental ranch of the Institute of Animal Sciences of CAAS in Beijing. The calf, which is China’s first Holstein ox cloned from somatic cells with a new approach, weighed 58.2 kg at birth and is showing normal vital signs. According to the Center of Forensic Sciences of Beijing Genomics Institute, the calf is genetically identical to the donor ox.


The research which started in 2010 used fibroblasts of Holstein oxen as donor cells and adopted the technique called hand-made cloning (HMC) which features enucleation and zona pellucida-free oocytes in producing embryos. Besides the HMC, another technique used in this research that is worth noting is that each surrogate cow only received one embryo. In 2011, after 11 embryo transfers (including two frozen embryo transfers), two of the surrogates established pregnancy and one ended in labor.