[MUSIC PLAYING]
JONATHAN HILL: We planned the day
that we would want this very special calf to be born.
All our plans were aimed at getting the fetus mature enough
to live when it came out in the air
and yet not so mature that it would come out by itself
and we would miss it.
PHILIP DAMIANI: It's been a long 10 months I, you know,
lost a lot of sleep thinking, what happens
if this animal doesn't make it?
This could be a severe blow to the potential use of cloning
technology in conservation.
And it felt like the whole world was kind
of watching what we were doing.
So I was pretty nervous.
JONATHAN HILL: I'm not getting it out this way.
[COW MOOS]
[INAUDIBLE]
[COW MOOS]
ELEANOR STERLING: When I first heard about this plan
to clone a gaur, I was very intrigued.
A gaur is an ox-like animal that lives in Asia,
and it's actually threatened in the world.
There are very few individuals left.
Somewhere between 13 and 30,000 are left in the wild.
I think the fact that this species is a threatened
species added a different element to the whole question
of cloning.
It's very different if you're using it for conservation
than if you're using it for domestic species.
JONATHAN HILL: Going to be a tough one to roll over, Jose.
SPEAKER 1: She is.
PHILIP DAMIANI: We got Noah's genetic material
through a third party called Rescue.
His cell line originated from the San Diego Zoo.
The gaur died in captivity, I believe in 1992.
So the tissue sample was cryo-preserved or frozen
for about eight years.
What we wanted to do at the laboratory in Worcester
was to apply a principle of somatic cell cloning,
but to kind of put a slight twist on it
by doing a procedure, what we call
cross-species nuclear transfer, or cross-species cloning.
And what that involves is taking genetic material
from one species and fusing it to the egg of another species.
We had a whole group of mature cow eggs
that actually have cow DNA inside them.
For us to be able to utilize those eggs,
we have to remove the cow DNA.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We then picked up an individual gaur cell
that contained a nucleus that had gaur DNA present--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
--placed that cell into the egg--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
--applied an electrical pulse, which allows the two
components to fuse together.
We then apply some chemical that induced what
we call fertilization events.
And that embryo then starts to divide.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We keep those embryos in culture for seven days.
We then ship the embryos back to Iowa to Trans Ova Genetics--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
--which they then transferred these gaur
embryos into a domestic cow.
So the whole project was done without ever
having to come in contact with the living gaur.
And actually, that's important when
you're looking at this in the field of conservation.
There are so few of these animals left,
many zoos don't want us doing research
on their gaur population.
So we were able to actually produce a gaur without ever
having to touch a living gaur.
[COW MOOS]
[CLATTER]
JONATHAN HILL: [INAUDIBLE]
SPEAKER 1: You got the cord?
[INAUDIBLE] I got the cord.
SPEAKER 2: Somebody grab the front legs.
SPEAKER 1: Pull.
It's coming.
Pull.
SPEAKER 3: I got it.
JONATHAN HILL: [INAUDIBLE]
SPEAKER 3: [INAUDIBLE] Start [INAUDIBLE] off.
JONATHAN HILL: The delivery itself is
nerve-wracking for two reasons.
Firstly, it's always a little bit tense
because you don't know what is going to come out
of the recipient animal, how healthy it will be,
and how much work you have to put into resuscitating it.
So it's always a tense time when you
get a neonate, a newborn animal, and you
have to see whether it's going to breathe.
But it was even more special in this case
because it was such a unique animal.
And it's the only one that we have to work with.
If this one didn't live, there was no second chance.
It would take another year or so to get more pregnancies
on the way.
PHILIP DAMIANI: I think this type of procedure
can be of some use in conservation biology.
As a scientist, I'm aware that habitat preservation is
extremely important and biodiversity
is important for survival of the species.
What we were trying to show with this technology
was that potentially this could salvage genetics that would
have been lost in a population.
So in Noah's case, he was actually
derived from a gaur that had not reproduced or allowed
his genetics to go on to the next generation.
We're now able to technically salvage
that genetics that would have been lost from that male gaur.
SPEAKER 3: Let's see if he'll stand or not.
ELEANOR STERLING: Cloning has the possibility
to bolster diminishing populations of animals.
The question is, should it be used?
My worry is that the public and politicians may
think of this as an easy fix.
Why conserve animals in the wild if we
can go ahead and clone them in the future and replace them?
The problem is that's absolutely not true.
Biodiversity is so complex, and the interactions
between species and their environment and within species
are things that we can't replicate, as smart as we
are and as much as we try.
And I think the safest and best thing to do
is to let biodiversity alone and continue as much as possible
rather than thinking that if we put our energy
and effort into something like cloning,
we can somehow replace what we've lost.
JONATHAN HILL: Bessie doesn't have a calf to look after,
but she won't be missing that too much.
She's not bellowing.
She's recovered from the surgery, recovered
from the c-section very well.
And Noah is looking great, because he can stand up.
He's very alert and active.
He's not as advanced as a normal calf would be at 12 hours,
but we think he's doing just fine.
PHILIP DAMIANI: I'm kind of tired.
It's been a long couple of days, every couple
hours coming back, checking on the cow,
and then checking on the calf.
And I think I'm still slightly in shock.
Every time I go and check on Noah, I look at it,
and my first impressions are, oh, it's another cloned calf,
and then I stop to think.
I'm like, well, wait, no, this is actually a wild animal
that's sitting out here.
And then I think about it.
I'm like, yeah, it's the first cloned endangered species.
And it feels pretty good.