Dubai centre cloning camels for their beauty, speed

The cloning of camels is big business in the Gulf states. Abir Al Ahmar reports for Reuters.

HAVING led the world’s first cloning of camels in 2009, Nisar Wani is now replicating a few dozen a year at a Dubai lab — a big business in the Gulf region where camels are cherished and can earn huge sums in beauty and racing contests.

‘‘We collect these eggs from the ovaries of slaughtered animals. We have to mature them in the lab for 24 hours before they reach the stage where we can use them for the cloning process,’’ Wani said.

Reproductive cloning of animals uses a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer.

DNA is removed from a camel egg cell and replaced with DNA from a frozen body cell of a camel prized for some quality such as speed or beauty. The egg then develops into an embryo with no sperm needed.

Animal cloning is, however, timeconsuming with low success rates.

‘‘From a hundred embryos that we transfer, we can have five to 10 pregnancies, and sometimes maybe three to six babies born,’’ Wani, originally a veterinarian who has a phD in animal reproduction, said.

The Reproductive Biotechnology Centre in Dubai works to preserve the cells of and reproduce elite racing camels, beauty contest winners, milking camels and prized males, Wani said.

It also uses interspecies cloning technology to preserve threatened species.

It has cloned critically endangered, doublehumped wild Bactrian camels using the eggs and surrogate mothers of singlehumped camels.

‘‘In cloning we are not doing anything new. God has created all the material. God has created the cells, we are only helping the process,’’ Wani said, adding it was one of a number of assisted reproductive technology techniques.

Most of the centre’s work preserving elite traits is done through the more conventional multiple embryo transfer method.

A valued camel’s ovary is stimulated to produce multiple eggs. After fertilisation with prized sperm, multiple embryos can be transferred to surrogate camels.

‘‘This year, for example, we have 20 pregnancies from one good male and one good female,’’ Wani said.

PHOTOS: REUTERS Advanced animal breeding . . . A surrogate mother with her cloned baby camel is pictured at the farm of the Reproductive Biotechnology Centre in Dubai, which researches and creates novel cloning techniques to reproduce camels in United Arab Emirates.

In the laboratory . . . Mature eggs collected from a dead camel being prepared for cloning are seen on a screen at the Reproductive Biotechnology Centre.