Regarding hair cloning/replication, like what Dr.Tsuji is working on: I wonder if the hair germs will carry with them the ageing and damage characteristics of the original hair, or if they will start life again? Dolly the sheep was cloned from an adult sheep but did not inherit aged characteristics if you get what I mean.
I wonder if there's anything from medical literature and cloning of other organs which could tell us more.
Edit:
On Dolly the sheep:
On 14 February 2003, Dolly was
euthanisedbecause she had a progressive lung disease and severe arthritis.
[14] A
Finn Dorset such as Dolly has a life expectancy of around 11 to 12 years, but Dolly lived 6.5 years. A post-mortem examination showed she had a form of lung cancer called
Jaagsiekte,
[15] which is a fairly common disease of sheep and is caused by the
retrovirus JSRV.
[16] Roslin scientists stated that they did not think there was a connection with Dolly being a clone, and that other sheep in the same flock had died of the same disease.[14] Such lung diseases are a particular danger for sheep kept indoors, and Dolly had to sleep inside for security reasons.
Some in the
press speculated that a contributing factor to Dolly's death was that she could have been born with a genetic age of six years, the same age as the sheep from which she was cloned.[17] One basis for this idea was the finding that Dolly's
telomereswere short, which is typically a result of the
ageing process.
[18][19] The Roslin Institute stated that intensive health screening did not reveal any abnormalities in Dolly that could have come from advanced aging.
[17]
Hmm so it seems a bit up in the air. But the fact that Dolly was born a normal calf might suggest that cloned hairs would break through as 'young' hairs. Whether they would age normally or faster remains to be seen I guess. Would like to know others thoughts.
, all that matters really.
