In the summer of 1996, a Scottish laboratory made a breakthrough that would forever alter our understanding of genetics and ignite intense debates about the ethics and the possibilities of cloning.
That day Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, was born. This milestone, achieved by researchers at the Roslin Institute, opened a new era in genetic engineering and shattered the belief that only embryonic cells possess the potential for the complete development of a new individual.
Since then there has been debate about the possibility of cloning human beings, but we have not done it and it does not seem that we will ever do it. Serezade, molecular biologist, researcher and scientific communicator, talks to us about that and many other things this week.
But we also discussed with her another fascinating topic: how the latest advances seem to be achieving something long sought after: slow aging.
There is a lot of fabric to cut here, and for example the environment, culture and habits shape our DNA. But there are also risks, ethics and genetic privacy intertwined. And all this raises a key question: does it make sense to be immortal?
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In WorldOfSoftware | The promise of 120 years is dismantled: biology sets a life ceiling that is quite difficult to break
