A mouse has smashed the record for sequential cloning – the ability to make clones of clones of clones. Now the laboratory behind the feat will attempt to make clones from cells extracted from mouse fur, stuffed bodies and excrement.

at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, who carried out the work, says the technique could help in producing high-quality animals for farms and conservation purposes. “If a ‘super cow’ that could produce a lot of milk or Kobe beef could be cloned at low cost, then not only consumers but also farmers would be happy,” he says.

Twenty-five generations of clones have come from the mouse, and all 580 of them were healthy, lived normal lifespans and could have healthy pups through normal mating.

In 2008, Wakayama’s team produced clones from dead mice that had been frozen for 16 years. “My lab is now trying to make cloned mice from fur, stuffed bodies, and excrement,” says Wakayama.

Third-generation clone

Enthusiasm for therapeutic cloning, as the technique that led to Dolly the sheep is known, waned in the mid-2000s following scientific fraud scandals in South Korea and the difficulty of producing animals without abnormalities. Researchers struggled to produce cloned cattle, pigs, cats and dogs beyond two or three generations.

Now Wakayama’s team has emphatically broken through this barrier thanks to a chemical which more faithfully resets the cell nucleus to be cloned back to an embryonic state.

First, the team emptied a mouse egg cell of its nucleus. Then they inserted a nucleus from the adult mouse to be cloned before putting this cell into a bath of an enzyme blocker called trichostatin. The resulting embryos – all females – had fewer abnormalities in their histones, the packing materials for chromosomes.

Previous studies had identified faulty histones in cloned embryos as a possible reason for the poor success rate of cloning, as well as clone abnormalities. A possible explanation for the previous limit on the number of “reclones” is a build up of such abnormalities over successive generations.

Game changer

“So far, nobody has been able to explain the reason for this,” says Wakayama. “We thought that this limitation was caused by the accumulation of genetic or epigenetic abnormalities.”

“This is very impressive work. If this translates to other mammalian species – including humans – it could be a major game changer,” says , chief medical officer at Advanced Cell Technology, a company based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, that is developing treatments based on stem cells.

Wakayama says he doesn’t know if his technique will make it easier to clone primates, let alone humans, and has no plans to try. “I am a mouse researcher and have no experience with other species. I will not even attempt to use rats, because male rats are extremely difficult to clone.”

One application of cloning is to preserve endangered species, as advocated late last year by Brazil. The ability to make clones from fur, specimens preserved in museums and excrement would potentially allow the “resurrection” of extinct animals.

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LIKE giant spacecraft that have just touched down, they give the countryside an otherworldly look.

Elevated land-based islands are what one architect is proposing for the Tƍhoku region of north-east Japan, the area that was devastated by last March’s magnitude 9 earthquake and the mega-tsunamis it triggered.

Keiichiro Sako of in Tokyo has created a blueprint in which groups of these islands form entire towns. They are designed to protect people living in low-lying areas from future tsunamis.

Tƍhoku Sky Village is not just an architect’s flight of fancy: one municipality in the affected region is making moves towards building one in its locality and others could follow.

Most islands will be used for residential purposes, with between 100 and 500 houses and apartments. Fuel stations, waste disposal and storage facilities, and car parks are on lower floors. Commercial islands, meanwhile, will house factories and processing facilities for industries such as fisheries and agriculture. As well as lifting residents high above the destructive power of the waves, the design comes with a number of safety features. A reinforced gate at the back of each island automatically closes after a tsunami warning, while steps up the sides let people climb to safety.

Power is off-grid, from renewable energy sources including wind and solar, to ensure supply following a disaster. Lithium-ion batteries act as backup. The islands’ oval shape is also important. Flat surfaces take the full force of a body of water, but an oval one allows water to flow around.

Each three-storey island would offer 90,000 square metres of usable space and be bolted deep into the bedrock via vast steel pillars. The exterior walls are made of 50-centimetre-thick reinforced concrete, while utility spaces on the bottom floor are compartmentalised in a radial formation for even stress distribution – rather like the spokes in a bicycle wheel.

“Each three-storey island would be bolted into the bedrock via vast steel pillars”

At the centre of each cluster of islands would be the administrative area, home to municipal offices, schools, businesses and leisure facilities. The ambitious plan also features the world’s first indoor marina to protect the local fishing fleet.

Other large-scale projects for rehousing the Tƍhoku people are in the pipeline, such as one by renowned architect Toyo Ito – designer of the in London – that employs a modern take on traditional architecture but built on higher ground. Another includes apartments built into the base of mountains.

However, while Ito’s concept involves the relocation of entire towns, Sako’s makes it possible for people to return to the land where they lived before.

“Moving to higher ground, officially recommended after the disaster, would mean a huge change for residents in the region, many of whom rely on the sea and land for their livelihood,” says Sako. “The aim of the project is to not only preserve communities, but to make them safer to inhabit.”

Critics point to the complex issue of how the reconstruction will be funded. Yasuaki Onoda of the Department of Architecture and Building Science at Tƍhoku University says that while the idea is sound, estimated costs of 20 billion yen (£160 million) per island are prohibitive.

To mitigate these costs, Tohoku Sky Village will recycle debris from the disaster for use in some building components. Sako also believes the islands will become a tourist attraction.

But there is one more possible obstacle: the people. Masayuki Wakui, a professor of architectural design at Tokyo Metropolitan University, believes that given the futuristic look of the islands, the “conservative” nature of people in Tƍhoku may pose a problem.

“It’s questionable that they will take to it easily. But if there are communities that decide they do not want to relocate but want to stay on the plains, this is a feasible option.”

When customers of the fisheries company Sanriku Toretate Ichiba want to shop for fish, they connect to the net. The firm, based in Sanriku town in Japan’s Iwate prefecture, posts details of its catches online in real time, offering consumers the chance to buy fish almost as soon as it is hauled from the sea. This could help make fishing more sustainable by matching supply and demand, says the entrepreneur behind the firm – though others are unconvinced.

Kenichiro Yagi set up his online fisheries company in 2010. Events since then have made the move seem prescient. Sanriku was devastated by last year’s tsunami. Iwate lost and over 9000 fishing vessels, leaving fishermen without the tools to catch fish or a place to sell it.

Total financial losses for the agriculture and fisheries industries as a result of the tsunami are estimated at „2 trillion ($26 billion), according to Tetsuo Morimoto, parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

“Real recovery in the region cannot be achieved without recovery of the food industry,” he told Japan’s annual Food Industry Summit in Sendai, one of the regions affected by the tsunami, last November. “We will do whatever we can to rehabilitate the food industry in the region.”

Boats with webcams

Yagi decided not to wait for government help. Within a month of the disaster his company was trading again. His team managed to salvage four boats and equipped them with webcams and laptop computers, for the purpose of putting details of catches online.

The approach has helped Yagi restart operations and enabled fishermen to get around the lack of a physical marketplace. Beyond that, Yagi says it could allow his crews to better match what they catch to consumers’ needs, reducing waste.

“The hard reality is most caught produce goes to waste and in extreme cases this results in fishermen increasing their catch to compensate for lost revenues,” Yagi says. “It’s a vicious circle that has gone on for a long time, but I think it can be countered by a reliable monitoring system, which this effectively is.”

The system could also allow unwanted fish to be identified quickly enough to be returned to the sea alive, benefiting marine ecosystems.

Whether the fishing industry in general could adopt similar practices is less clear. Doing so on large trawlers that catch thousands of fish each trip might require an automated system to quickly categorise the catch.

Fish fingerprints

Computer vision software could help. In 2008 at the University of Bristol, UK, developed software to identify African penguins based on each individual’s unique plumage pattern. Fish scales may provide a similar visual fingerprint to identify species, he says – although he adds that the application of computer vision to animal recognition is in its embryonic stages.

Even if it proves possible to automatically categorise unwanted fish quickly enough to return them to the seas, Blake Lee-Harwood of the , a non-profit body, has his doubts about the benefits for sustainability. “In the case of trawlers, there is a lethal process where caught fish get squashed together in the nets.” Most of what is thrown back is thus dead, he says.

Other industry observers believe that the convenience of an online market could result in more demand for fish – bad news for already dwindling fish stocks. “More harm than good could result without an effort on the fishermen’s behalf to improve consumer awareness,” says Jun Morikawa at Rakuno Gakuen University in Sapporo.

Consumer awareness

Yagi, however, believes that providing a live feed from the boats will, in fact, boost consumer awareness. “Our objective is to form a connection between fishermen and consumers.”

Japan is home to 2 per cent of the world’s population but consumes around 10 per cent of the world’s catch. Depleted stocks means that today around half of Japan’s catch is imported.

But as in other wealthy countries, sustainability of supply is not necessarily a focus for shoppers. Only three of the top 10 supermarket chains in Japan sell sustainably caught produce, and the range is limited.

The live fishing feeds may help buck the trend. “It is precisely because of the anonymity of fisheries workers that the world’s oceans are overfished,” says Yagi. “By placing them centre stage we have the opportunity to relay the need to protect marine resources – and at the same time create a new kind of market.”