In the desert sands of a wealthy Arabian kingdom, a famously beautiful long-dead camel called Mabrokan has been brought back to life. Eleven healthy camel calves recently celebrated their first birthday in the red dunes of the United Arab Emirates. They look like normal camel babies, but these identical brothers are extraordinary. They are clones, born from the frozen cells of the show champion, Mabrokan, who died more than a decade ago. Spearheaded by an Emirati royal, Sheikh Mansoor bin Zayed, this astounding achievement is the result of a collaboration between South Korean cloning expert, Professor Hwang Woo-Suk, and Australian veterinarian and camel expert, Alex Tinson.
As the world’s leading camel vet, Tinson’s story is as fascinating as his many outstanding achievements in the field of camel reproduction. His autobiography, The Desert Vet, chronicles his journey ‘from city boy to Bedouin nomad’ and has attracted the attention of filmmakers and production studios.
More than 30 years ago, Tinson was head-hunted to improve the speed and performance of the UAE Crown Prince’s racing camel stock. At that time, the Crown Prince (now President and Ruler of the UAE), Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayan’s camels ranked second to last out of the seven emirates. Although new to the wiles and power plays of Middle Eastern culture, Tinson soon realized the goal was not simply to win the lavish cash prizes or the coveted Golden Sword. In the Arabian desert, whoever owned the fastest racing camels held the prestige of all the tribal clans.
Within a few short years of improved nutrition, training and breeding the Crown Prince’s racing stable secured their position at the top of the camel racing league. In the process of breeding faster racing camels, Tinson pioneered several world firsts in the field of camel reproduction: first camel calf born from embryo transfer, first calf born from a frozen embryo and first identical twin calves born from embryo bisection. Now he can add first cloned camel calves born from the frozen cells of a dead donor.
Thanks to the humble camel, Tinson is firmly entrenched in the UAE. His eldest daughter married an Emirati, and he has four Emirati grandchildren. Although he has built a life in the desert sands of Arabia, Tinson’s love affair with camels began in the deserts of Australia. In early 1988, Tinson was the race vet for the Great Australian Camel Race, a gruelling 3300 km endurance race through Australia’s harsh Outback landscape. “On one of the legs a camel travelled 220 km in 23 hours,” Tinson said. “They covered distances no-one believed possible. That’s when my fascination for the camel really grew exponentially, along with my respect.” And it was halfway during the race that he was offered the job that would change his life.
Tinson is a self-professed ‘camel tragic’, admiring the desert beasts for their beauty, intelligence, grace and grit. “Camels can deal with anything, no matter what you throw at them. They’re tough. From a vet’s point of view, they’re an easy and fascinating animal to work with. Compared to cows and horses, camels can survive on less water and food and are more resistant to disease. And even though camels have an extra membrane in their placenta and the calf has a long neck and long legs, they give birth a lot easier.”
Now it seems they clone much easier too. “The best pregnancy rate we’ve had from cloning is 52 per cent with an average of 30 per cent,” Tinson said. “In cows the pregnancy rate from cloning is 15 per cent and it’s only 8-10 per cent in horses.”
The President’s stable of 3000 racing camels live at Hili in the desert sands north of the oasis town of Al Ain. It is here that Tinson oversees the natural breeding, oocyte collection and embryo transfer operations. The cloning process is led by Professor Hwang Woo-Suk at the UAE Biotech Research Center, a state-of-the-art lab set up by Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE and Minister for Presidential Affairs, Sheikh Mansoor bin Zayed. Professor Hwang is the South Korean veterinarian and cloning expert who created the world’s first cloned dog. He is also known for his controversial claim of cloning the world’s first human embryos and his interest in resurrecting the woolly mammoth.
With the world’s leading camel reproduction expert and the world’s leading animal cloning expert on board, it’s no wonder UAE Biotech is achieving such amazing results. The centre clones camels for their racing prowess, high milk yields or good looks. Cloning for beauty is not as bizarre as it sounds when you realize beauty pageant winners are worth millions of dollars. The champion show camel, Mabrokan, weighed over 1000 kg and had a massive head that towered three metres above his handlers in his ‘show stance’. In fact, Mabrokan was so renowned for his beauty that when he died, he was given the rare honour of being sent to Paris to be stuffed. His body is on permanent display in the foyer of the Ministry for Presidential Affairs.
“When Mabrokan died suddenly in 2010, a quick decision was made to preserve some of his tissues in case something ‘exciting’ could be done for him in the future,” Tinson said. “It was the height of summer with 50C+ daily temperatures which made the collection and preservation of tissue sub-optimal. But some testicular tissue and skin was harvested and preserved in liquid nitrogen at -196C in the hope they might be viable. These tissues literally laid in suspended animation for ten years until they were examined post-thaw by Professor Hwang’s team. Against the odds, there were viable cells in the skin tissue samples.”
The cloning process involves Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). In this process, the DNA of the surrogate oocyte (egg) is removed and replaced by the donor cell DNA using micro-needles and robotic-like micro-manipulation under a high magnification microscope. Using the same SCNT method that had given the team successful births from living donor camels, the DNA from Mabrokan’s frozen skin cells was fused into a new egg using a micro-pulse of electricity. The embryos created were cultured for six days in the lab under a delicate incubation process and transferred into surrogate female camels. This resulted in a total of 45 pregnancies. Of this number, 11 live calves with an identical match to Mabrokan were born in February 2021.
At the UAE Biotech Research Center it’s not just camels on the menu. The centre has set its sights on leading the world with large scale commercial cloning of horses, camels, cattle, dogs, cats, and wildlife. But what of the ethics and animal welfare issues involved?
“Many people will be against cloning,” Tinson said. “I was against it at the start. But look at what it enables you to do. The research side is quite extraordinary. Take Moodir, a camel who won five Gold Swords last year. She is the fastest camel we’ve ever had. Now we have 22 cloned pregnancies from her. Imagine what you could do with those 22 copies in exercise physiology research, nutrition, and performance research.
“Our biggest issue in breeding technology is restriction to quality stock,” Tinson continued. “So a good male can quickly become overused through mating, and fertility decreases. But if we clone our best camels, we can have these cloned animals in different locations. We can mate the clone without fear of overexerting the (original) camel. And if you mate these clones back to normal stock you maintain hybrid vigour and won’t decrease the gene pool.”
Although researchers have observed some adverse health effects (including an increase in birth size, defects in vital organs, premature aging and immune system problems) in sheep and other mammals that have been cloned, Tinson is surprised at the lack of abnormalities in cloned camel offspring. Perhaps it’s another reason to extol the wonders of the camel.
The science of cloning is ever evolving and opens the door to endless possibilities. Cloning could save animals on the endangered list and species on the verge of extinction. Tinson’s team is already involved in cloning rare and endangered Arabian mammals. But the scope is even greater. Just like Mabrokan was brought back from the dead, extinct species could be brought back to life.
The UAE has proved many times over that it has the wealth, technology, and grandiose desires to make anything possible. As fantastic as it sounds, visions of woolly mammoths roaming an artificially designed ice park in the desert may one day be a reality.
Although DNA collected from Ice Age mammoths appears viable, there are other logistical issues. Elephants are the logical surrogates, but their size creates problems. “It’s too difficult to collect oocytes from a live elephant either vaginally or surgically. One thought is to transplant ovarian tissue from an elephant into the ovary of a lab animal and grow elephant oocytes in, say, a rat,” Tinson said.
Researchers are also looking into gene-editing the skin cells of elephants to carry mammoth genes and growing the embryo in an artificial womb.
“But do we need to resurrect the mammoth when elephants are facing enough problems?”
It’s a pertinent question and one worthy of serious deliberation. The resurrection of an extinct species like the woolly mammoth seems technically within reach but the ethical and animal welfare considerations require further discussion, examination, and thorough understanding of the consequences.
“There’s no doubt that when you’re bringing something back from the dead, there’s a real worry of developing a God complex. It’s a huge ego thing,” Tinson said. “It’s a scary situation when you think we have a lot of human genetic material and a lot of potential surrogates. I worry what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands. And whose are the wrong hands?”
In the desert sands at Hili, Mabrokan’s 11 cloned calves are oblivious to the extraordinary story of their creation. Nor are they concerned with the future implications of their very existence. Like any other year-old camel baby, they frolic through the sand on their gangly legs and chatter and play with their pack. They live comfortable and unburdened lives, but these cloned beauties are watched very closely. Only time will tell if they realize the full potential of their acclaimed and identical show champion, Mabrokan, but to Tinson these babies will always be exceptional.
They are living proof of what can be achieved when one man pushes the boundaries of what is possible.
Olivia Pozzan