Just 25 years ago, Dolly the Sheep was born in the frenzy of the media.
Longhair beasts proved that animals can be cloned and "opened up many possibilities for biology and medicine."
She will appear in a BBC documentary that will explore Dolly's influence. Here is everything you need to know about Dolly the Sheep.
She announced to the world on February 22, 1997, which aroused fanatical attention from the media. She lived from 1996 to 2003.
She is the result of an experiment at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which was conducted by a team led by Professor Ian Wilmut.
The University of Edinburgh said: "Dolly was cloned from the mammary gland cells of a six-year-old Finnish Dorset sheep and the egg cells of a Scottish blackface sheep.
"Dolly's white face is one of the first signs that she is a clone, because if she is genetically related to her surrogate mother, her face will be black.
"Because Dolly's DNA comes from a breast cell, she is named after country singer Dolly Parton."
Dolly lives in the Roslin Institute, and besides some media appearances, she also lives a normal life with other sheep.
She raised 6 lambs and a Welsh mountain ram named David, and unfortunately died after being infected with a virus called Jaagsiekte Sheep Retrovirus (JSRV), which can cause lung cancer in animals . She was euthanized on February 14, 2003.
The Roslin Institute stated that after her death, it “donated Dolly’s body to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she has become one of the museum’s most popular exhibits.
"Dolly is back on display in the museum after a major refurbishment of the gallery, along with an interactive exhibition on the ethics of creating genetically modified animals, which features current research from the Roslin Institute."
After cloning Dolly, Professor Ian Wilmut used the acquired knowledge to "make stem cells that can be used in regenerative medicine." He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2005 and became the first director of the MRC Regenerative Medicine Center in 2006.
The Roslin Institute said: “Dolly’s birth certificate allows scientists to reverse the time of a fully developed adult cell to make it behave like a cell from a newly fertilized embryo. This encourages researchers in Edinburgh and around the world to study other technologies. Reprogramming of adult cells eventually led to the discovery of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells."
Pluripotent stem cells can produce any cells or tissues that the body needs for self-repair, and have multiple uses in medicine.
The BBC's summary said: "The story of the scientist who created Dolly. Dolly is the sheep who changed the world.
"This documentary tells the complete story for the first time in an unprecedented archive, revealing how a small number of the world's best genetic scientists worked secretly to crack the holy grail of life: cloning on a small farm in Scotland.
"This story, when it broke out, caused a moral panic that swept the world. But how did it happen? Who was behind the scenes? What is science? In the end, what is Dolly's legacy today?"
The documentary will be broadcast on BBC 2 on Wednesday, December 8th at 9pm. It will also be available on BBC iPlayer.
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