Conceiving a Clone : 1983

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1983: The failure of Solter & McGrath.

In 1983 Davor Solter, working David McGrath, attempted to clone mice using his own version of the nuclear transfer method. Solter and McGrath wanted to use the cloning experiment to determine if DNA specializes as a cell specializes.

Solter and McGrath used the Sendai virus to bond a mouse egg cell whose nucleus had been removed with a cell from a two-celled mouse embryo. The resulting embryos died immediately or after a few divisions. In a previous experiment designed to test their method of nuclear transfer before attempting to clone, Solter and McGrath used the same method to bond a single celled embryo to an egg cell whose nucleus remained. From these experiments, Solter and McGrath obtained live mice. From these two experiments, Solter concluded that nothing was wrong with the process of his cloning experiment but his failure was due to the impossibility of cloning. In a 1984 paper published in Science describing his work, Solter stated, "The cloning of mammals, by simple nuclear transfer, is biologically impossible."

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