The world’s first cloned camel produced in the desert of Dubai made news in April this year. However, the man behind the scientific feat — an Indian scientist — went largely unnoticed.

Dr Nisar Ahmad Wani, a senior reproductive biologist at Dubai’s Camel Reproduction Centre who had worked as assistant professor in Sher-i-Kashmir University of Agricultural Technology, toiled for six long years to achieve this.

Injaz or achievement in Arabic, a humped female camel, is the 12th domestic species to be cloned. “Injaz was born on April 8 after an uncomplicated pregnancy. She is doing much better than animals her age,” Dr Wani told The Indian Express from Dubai.

“Injaz is the clone of a camel slaughtered for its meat. When she was born, its DNA completely matched the adult female cells from where it was derived, thereby confirming the cloning,” he added. She was produced by injecting the cells harvested from the female camel ovary into a camel oocyte (female germ cell or reproductive cell) whose nucleus had been removed. The two were then subjected to a split-second electrical impulse and chemically activated to induce them to start dividing like a normal fertilised egg. The resulting embryo was cultured for seven days in laboratory before it was re-implanted into a surrogate camel. Pregnancy was confirmed in 20 days and lasted the normal 12.5 months.

“When I joined the institute, I was amazed to see the amount of work done on other species. Though camel was their priority, they didn’t know much about it. The cloning process started in 2007,” he added.

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