India, Iran to clone asiatic cheetahs

zakur

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Project to clone extinct cheetah gets a boost

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology's bid to clone the Asiatic cheetah, an extinct wild animal in India, has received a major boost, with Iran reportedly agreeing to collaborate in a research project.

The visit by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to the premier research institute in biotechnology Tuesday appears to have paved the way for the long-pending project.

The Asiatic cheetah, known for its agility and high speed, went extinct [in India] about 50 years ago but Iran still has many cheetahs.
...

Under the project, the scientists plan to insert a nucleus of cheetah cell into the live eggs of a leopard after stripping these of the leopard genetic material.

This mixed cell will then be artificially inseminated into a female leopard for developing it into a cheetah.
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I love the thought of being able to bring back extinct animals. But what's the point if we do not remedy the issues that made them go extinct in the first place? Are the Indians willing to give the cheetah habitat or are they just going to put it on display in a zoo?

I am also wondering if they have viable DNA from the extinct Cheetah.
 
The Asiatic Cheetah is extinct only in India, so they aren't exactly cloning an "extinct" animal.

http://www.csew.com/felidtag/pages/Reports/reports_nonattendees.htm
The Asiatic cheetah once ranged from Arabia to India, through Arabia, Iran, central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and, particularly in Iran and the Indian subcontinent, it was numerous. Cheetahs were easy to train, and rulers kept huge numbers for hunting gazelles. The Moghul Emperor of India, Akbar, is said to have had 1,000 at a time. It appears in many Persian and Indian miniature paintings. But by 1900 it was already headed for extinction in many areas. The last physical evidence of cheetahs in India was three shot (with two bullets) by the Maharajah of Surguja in 1947 in eastern Madhya Pradesh. By 1990, cheetahs appeared to survive only in Iran. Estimated to number over 200 during the 1970s, current estimates by Iranian biologist Hormoz Asadi put the number at 50 to 100.
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The folks at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology are evidently asking the Iranians for access to some of their Asiatic Cheetahs and their DNA, they will use a leopard as outlined, and then presumably they will reintroduce the cloned Asiatic Cheetahs into India.
 
Well, that's the gist of the OP's article--relations between India and Iran are good enough that they can ask Iran for some cheetahs, and have some hope that Iran will say "okay".

Politics. Lots and lots of politics.
 
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