Italian scientists have freeze-dried and resuscitated sheep cells, raising hope for the preservation of endangered species.
It is the first time ever that cells with a nucleus have been dried, left dormant for years and come out to produce embryos.
Only simple organisms like yeast had ever been preserved in this way, although red blood cells - which do not have a nucleus - were successfully freeze-dried for the first time ten years ago.
The Italian team was led by Pasqualino Loi, father of the world's first cloned wild animal, a Sardinian moufflon sheep.
Working first in Sardinia and later at his present post at Teramo University in Abruzzo, Loi isolated cells from around a sheep's ovaries and sent them to the Bet Degan Farm Research Institute in Israel to be freeze-dried.
They were then sent back to Italy, preserved at ambient temperature for 3-5 years, rehydrated and implanted into a sheep's egg from which the nucleus had been removed, where they later produced embryos.
''They were, to all intents and purposes, dead cells but once they were placed in the egg they were resuscitated and the internal environment began to reprogram them,'' Loi told ANSA.
He said his team wasn't interested in producing sheep but only showing that the technique worked.
The new technique which allows cells to be kept at room temperature is much cheaper than the current method of storing cells in liquid oxygen, making it much easier to preserve endangered species he said.
Loi said he got the idea for his study, which appears in the latest edition of the journal PLos ONE, when he heard that mice sperm had been freeze-dried several years ago.
Italian farmers association Coldiretti reacted to the report by saying ''freeze-dried and cloned lambs must never be served up in Italy,'' noting that a majority of Italians are against cloned meat.
