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THE scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep are trying to create copies of Scotland’s giant pandas.

Tian Tian and Yang Guang are living at Edinburgh Zoo but no cubs have been born to the pair despite zookeepers’ assistance.

Now a team of experts, including the embryologist who helped create Dolly, are involved in research that paves the way for the animals to be cloned.

They took tissue samples from the pandas’ mouths and, for the first time, were able to isolate the “building-block” cells which are the first stage of the cloning process.

The discovery and pioneering research may one day help to revive giant panda numbers and save the endangered animals from extinction.

Dr Bill Ritchie, director of Roslin Embryology, was part of the team who created Dolly, the world’s first successfully cloned mammal, in 1996, and is involved in the panda project.

He said: “This is a step in bringing back an endangered species or helping to preserve them.”

Tian Tian and Yang Guang, also known as Sunshine and Sweetie, are the only giant pandas in the UK. There have been high hopes that the pair will produce babies since their arrival on a decade-long loan from China in 2011.

But female pandas are only fertile once a year and so far attempts to encourage them to mate have failed.

This year, Tian Tian was artificially inseminated but lost the cub during pregnancy.

The researchers at Roslin Embryology are part of a team who also include the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Durham University’s school of biological and biomedical sciences and the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda.

Dolly caused a sensation when her arrival was announced to the public in 1997. She died in 2003, aged six.

Since the breakthrough, several other species have been cloned, including mice, cows and goats. Now the method is being considered to help preserve species that are at risk of extinction.

­Edinburgh Zoo have seen their annual income rocket to nearly £15million since Tian Tian and Yang Guang arrived in Scotland four years ago.