Early Edition

Endangered Species Successfully Cloned

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CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: In a cloning experiment in Massachusetts, a pregnant cow named Bessie gave birth this week. It wasn't a calf, but the first cloned endangered species, a wild ox called a gaur.

Science correspondent Ann Kellan has joined us for a follow-up here.

Ann, the big question the other day when you were presenting this story what exactly was going to come out of this experiment?

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we were all excited and anticipating the birth of the first endangered species cloned. And the good news is it was a success. The birth happened on Monday, and you saw the little pictures of the first gaur. His name is Noah. But unfortunately, 48 hours after the birth he died. So researchers now have to go back to the drawing board and see why. They say it was an infection. It was dysentery and it was not related to the cloning. But it leads to questions about the hope of whether they want to further clone endangered species.

They have -- they do see this as positive because they did -- he was born. So now they want to research it more and see where we take it from here. But it is a way to preserve endangered species, and they're looking at it seriously.

LIN: Right. And take us back to how they thought of this idea. What did they think that they were going to try to accomplish with this?

KELLAN: Well cloning basically is they take the skin cell -- the mother was Bessie, a cow, the surrogate mother. And how it works is they take an egg cell from the cow, they hollow out the nucleus, and then they take a skin cell from the gaur and they insert the nucleus material into that egg cell. Then the cell multiplies, and then they put it in Bessie, the cow. She carried it successfully to term, and that was what the good news was. And they did have a healthy birth. Unfortunately, little Noah died.

LIN: So are they going to try this again?

KELLAN: They will probably try it again. We're -- we're interviewing the researchers right now, and I'm sure they do want to. I know they're looking to clone an extinct species next, a Spanish mountain goat. But we're going to wait and see what they tell us. We're interviewing them right now, so we're going to -- I'm interested to see if they're going to still do that or if they're going to go back and try to do the gaur first.

LIN: That's interesting.

KELLAN: We'll let you know later -- yes.

LIN: They have DNA from an extinct species that they can try this with?

KELLAN: Frozen zoo. They keep these cells frozen.

LIN: Wow.

KELLAN: This gaur was an old gaur that was frozen solid.

LIN: That's amazing.

KELLAN: Yes.

LIN: Thanks so much, Ann Kellan, for bringing us up to date.

KELLAN: Sure.

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