A team of French and American researchers has successfully cloned a horse, Texas A&M University officials announced Wednesday. The foal was named Paris Texas.

　　The university believes it’s the first successful cloned horse in North America; horses have previously been cloned in Italy.

　　A&M researchers used adult horse skin cells biopsied from a valuable horse in Europe to clone the foal, born March 13. The process took 400 attempts over a four-month period.

　　Six embryos were created but only one was successfully gestated in a host horse named Greta during a pregnancy that lasted 12 1/2 months. Horses usually have an 11-month gestation.

　　Cryozootech, A&M’s Paris-based partner, is dedicated to preserving the genes of exceptional horses for their use in producing cloned offspring, though there are no guarantees Paris Texas will turn out exactly the same as the donor horse.

　　The first cloned cat was born at the school Dec. 22, 2001. Since then, the university has cloned several litters of pigs, a Boer goat, a disease-resistant Angus bull, the first Brahma bull and a deer.

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