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Every day, we get a little closer to bringing prehistoric species back from extinction. Already, researchers are hard at work preparing woolly mammoth tissue for cloning and breeding chickens to more closely resemble the mighty T-Rex. One species on the possible "to-clone" list is modern human's close cousin, the Neanderthal. But if we develop the technology to clone a Neanderthal, does that mean we should? We want to know what you think. More »
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A team of Russian and Japanese scientists recently announced that they have discovered pristine DNA samples of woolly mammoths, and they will clone a living mammoth within five years. It's tremendously exciting...but almost certainly not going to happen. Here's why. More »
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Science writer Emma Marris recently wrote an excellent post over at Last Word On Nothing that explores some of the ethical and technical implications of cloning extinct (and near-extinct) species. More »
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At Incheon Airport, the Korean Custom Service has turned to seven cloned pooches to sniff out drug mules. These golden Labrador Retrievers are all the genetic duplicates of Chase, a retired drug-sniffing dog whose nose was among the most discerning Incheon had ever seen. More »
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At one point in Misconception, the "fertility thriller" by renowned fertility specialist (and Natalie Portman's dad) Avner Hershlag, someone writes a letter to the First Lady that reads: More »
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The big news, back in the day, was sequencing the human genome. It was a long, laborious process, and the resulting document was hardly a page-turner, but it meant that, if someone had the right technology, they could reconstruct human DNA from scratch. They could build a human. Now, they can build a whole lot of things. The National Center for Biotechnology Information has an online listing of genome projects both finished and unfinished, animal and plant. Among others they have the panda bear, the mallard, the moa, and the white-tufted-eared marmoset. The list is far from complete, but the work is ongoing, and one day, aliens may be able to use the web to find the way to re-build all the species on earth. More »
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Let's say, for the sake of amusement, that the asteroid that will miss us in 2029 really is going to hit us in 2036. Considering the massive climate change, extinction events, and general devastation that such an impact would cause, a lot of possible goals seem kind of silly. Why bother conserving a species that's going to get wiped out anyway? What's the point in controlling global warming if the dust kicked up into the atmosphere is going to play merry hell with the climate? And why bother making a city energy-efficient if it's just going to end up a smoking crater? There's no point in saving a world that's doomed. More »
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Do you enjoy space opera, fantastic technologies, millennia-old mysteries, and terrifically wicked villains who want their offspring to embrace their dark side? Do you like women too? Then you'll love 1981's Hugo winner, The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge. More »
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The indie flick Jim pinballs between two unlikely, intertwined storylines: a depressed man in the present contemplates suicide, and a clone child gains sentience in a far-off dystopian future. While this dual plot is promising, it ultimately doesn't coalesce. More »
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The musical, measured Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm — which won the Hugo in 1977 — is an artful admixture of clones and poetry, with a message that'll never get old. More »
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A new study published in Science Express shows that by de-activating a gene found in the X chromosome they see a 9-fold increase in cloning efficiency of the adorable mice you see above. The gene is XIST, which normally shuts down one of the two X chromosomes for females, which prevents females from having twice as many X-chromosome products in their bodies as males. However, when making clones, the gene tends to malfunction. By deleting it, the experimenters went from an average of less than one successful baby mouse clone per litter, to 3-5 successful ones. More »
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This is concept art for the "In Vitro Meat House" by Mitchell Joachim of Terreform. The house is made of pig cells that were grown in a lab and fused onto scaffolding. It's like living in a scrapple cabin! More »
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A blonde heroine fights her evil clone, while her superpowered male friend is too busy drying his hair to help out. I have no idea what TV show this is from, but it's one of dozens on this Youtube channel. More »
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The most frustrating, annoying thing about the opposite sex is that they're not you. Why can't you just meet your exact duplicate — except for sex? You'd be a perfect match. Luckily, science fiction suggests 3 ways it could happen. More »
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After he's regenerated as the Eleventh Doctor in the fifth season of Doctor Who, Matt Smith will experience a different sort of resurrection. In the first trailer for moody romance Womb he plays a man cloned by his grieving widow. More »
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The Korean Customs Service just got six new employees: a set of Labrador Retrievers cloned from a top drug-sniffing dog. Soon, they'll be rooting out heroin smugglers, and getting a good whiff of your dirty laundry. More »
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Natasha Henstridge, promoting her upcoming sci-fi mini-series Impact, chatted with us about her fanbase, cloning, her upcoming collaboration with Stan Lee, and aging gracefully out of the space-hottie pigeonhole. More »
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Video of a fertility doctor injecting cloned human embryos into a woman's womb have made their way online, outraging the medical community. But the doctor in question is defiant about the importance of his work. More »
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As Christmas approaches, many prepare to celebrate the mystery of the virgin birth. Check out our list of science fiction's own examples of single-parent reproduction, from pre-programmed pregnancy to alien encounters and drug-induced parthenogenesis. More »
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There's a lot wrong with Arnold Schwarzenegger clone actioner The 6th Day, but this scene is just so right. Early in the film, Arnie visits a store at his local mall called RePet, where they will clone your pet and implant the memories of your old pet "in just two hours." Christian anti-cloners are protesting outside the store. When they tell Arnie that "God doesn't want you to go in there," he responds, "Well God shouldn't have killed my dog then." Zing! Then the slick clone salesman gives him the best pitch ever. Everything goes downhill once Arnie himself is cloned, but luckily this scene is in the happy place before all the egregious pseudo-science goes down. [The 6th Day via IMDB] More »
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Anti-cloning advocates may want to keep their pitchforks at the ready. A United Nations bioethics committee is taking a second look at the UN’s current cloning policy, which condemns all possible forms of human cloning. Could the UN be on track to relax its views on cloning, or is it looking to ban the practice for good? More »
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When your dog dies, it's a tough loss. But now you can bring back Fido, and not in the "Pet Cemetery" evil-pet way, either. BioArts International, a biotech company in California announced this week that they're partnering with South Korean cloning expert (and fraudster) Hwang Woo-Suk to deliver dog copies to the five highest bidders in their pet-cloning auction. Bids start at $100,000 dollars. More »
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In 1978, David Rorvik, medical reporter for the New York Times and Time Magazine, wrote a book called In His Image: The Cloning of Man. In it, he claimed that a real human clone had just been born. Everyone believed him because he was — at least until then — a credible reporter, and his book was published by a well-known publishing house in the medical field. Everyone, that is, except for the rest of the science community. More »
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In three to five years, a baby will be born with two genetic mothers and one father. This could prove to be a boon for polyamorous families of the future who want to have children with more than two parents. A team of British researchers working with embryos have now perfected the three-parent babymaking technique. More »
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The 2001 movie Repli-Kate is so many things: a ripoff of Weird Science, a comedy of cloning, and the only movie I've ever seen where Eugene Levy yells "PENIS PENIS PENIS" really loudly, over and over, for reasons I can't even remember. Here's a great scene where one of the gene geeks uses his amazing high-throughput sequencer to create a clone of a hot chick from some blood drops on a CD-ROM. Even the genechip whiz kid Michael Eisen, whom I know for a fact has watched this movie, agrees that this is the most thrilling representation of genetic engineering ever captured on film. More »
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Hwang Woo-Suk, the stem cell researcher whose scientific papers were revealed as frauds over two years ago, has quietly been applying for permission to get back into stem cell research again in South Korea. Hwang is still up on charges of fraud, embezzlement and ethical breaches after he claimed (falsely) that he'd created the first human stem cells via cloning. There were also shenanigans in his lab involving the lady researchers being forced to donate their eggs for experiments. Officials in Seoul, where Hwang applied for his research permit, have until next month to make a decision about whether to grant it. [AFP] More »
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With new Indiana Jones and Hellboy movies on the horizon, we're reminded of heroes who fought supernatural Nazis from time to time. Heck, both Hellboy and Indiana Jones came face-to-moustache with Hitler, and Indy even got his autograph. But not all superheroes are so lucky. Some don't get to battle the Big Bad himself — they only get to square off with Hitler's clones. You'd be surprised how many Hitler clones have popped up in movies, TV and comics. More »
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