WORLD> Middle East
Report: Iran's first cloned goat born in Isfahan
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-16 20:34

TEHRAN - Iran's first cloned goat has been born at the Isfahan campus of the Royan Institute and is in good health, local English-language newspaper Iran Daily reported on Thursday.

The cloned goat was developed in a surrogate uterus of a black Bakhtiari goat for 147 days and was born early Wednesday morning through a cesarean section, the report said.

The cloned goat, named Hanna and also known as R-CAP-C1, is visibly different from other goats because of its white and fawn color.

According to a statement of the Royan Institute on its website, only a few countries such as the United States, Britain, Canada and China have a cloned goat in their list of achievements.

The ultimate goal of Iran's cloning researches is to achieve the technology of producing recombinant drugs, the statement said.

In 2006, Iran became the first country in the Middle East to announce it had cloned a sheep. The cloned sheep, named Royana, is still alive and healthy, the institute said.