SKIRMISHER

Professor Esmail Zanjani of the University of Nevada loves his new sheep — not because it is sweet, enthusiastic, and can do an uncanny rendition of Aya Matsuura’s Pretz commercial — but because it is the world’s first “chimera” with the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep’s foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

It took Zanjani 7 years and £5 million to perfect his technique [if you have a thing for scientific papers, see his original 2000 paper here], but what is lots of money and time if you end up with a sheep you can love?

Nice sheep: 15% human, 85% animal, 100% Zanjani-induced badness.

Stumble it!