Woody Allen gag leads to cloning success

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. cloning researchers used a gag from a Woody Allen movie to successfully clone mice from cells in their noses.

The research was performed in the laboratories of Boston's Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, and Richard Axel, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Columbia University in New York City.

The researchers wanted to see if a single mature olfactory neuron, when introduced into an egg, or oocyte, depleted of its nucleus, could revert to an undifferentiated state in which it could give rise to an adult mouse possessing the full range of olfactory receptors.

The mice that resulted could smell just fine, the researchers reported Monday in the online edition of the journal Nature.

The scientists credit the idea for the experiments to Woody Allen, whose classic comedy "Sleeper" depicted scientists trying to clone a dead dictator from his nose.