How does animal cloning fit in the picture? Transposon count should be preserved as part of the DNA in the cloned animal and that seems to imply that we’d see accelerated aging, especially if the source cell has been taken from an aged animal. That doesn’t seem to happen, though, cloned animals and their offspring appear to have normal lives and lifespans as long as they get past the early development process (https://doi.org/10.1159/000452444).
How common is it for transposon count to increase in a cell? If it’s a generally uncommon event for any one cell, then it could simply be that clones from a large portion of cells will only start off with marginally more (if any) extra transposons, while those that do start off with a fair bit more don’t make it past the early development process.
How does animal cloning fit in the picture? Transposon count should be preserved as part of the DNA in the cloned animal and that seems to imply that we’d see accelerated aging, especially if the source cell has been taken from an aged animal. That doesn’t seem to happen, though, cloned animals and their offspring appear to have normal lives and lifespans as long as they get past the early development process (https://doi.org/10.1159/000452444).
How common is it for transposon count to increase in a cell? If it’s a generally uncommon event for any one cell, then it could simply be that clones from a large portion of cells will only start off with marginally more (if any) extra transposons, while those that do start off with a fair bit more don’t make it past the early development process.