On February 22, 1997, British scientists announced the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first clone of an adult mammal. Named after Dolly Parton, Dolly was grown from a single memory cell that contained all the information needed to create an entirely new sheep.
Dolly’s life began as a single cell in a test tube. That cell had been taken from the memory gland of a Fin Dorset sheep and combined with an egg cell from a Scottish Blackface sheep. At six days old, scientists were able to confirm that the embryo’s growth was average, and it was then transferred to a surrogate mother. Dolly the sheep was born on July 5, 1996.
Dolly was a part of the Roslyn Institute’s research into producing genetically modified animals. Dolly’s birth was kept under wraps until Roslyn institute’s research paper was published on February 22, 1997. Many traveled to the University of Edinburgh to meet Dolly, the clone.