On the outskirts of Dubai, behind security fencing and guarded access points, sits a compound that feels like it belongs to a different city, not the one known for glass towers and artificial islands.
Its grounds are dotted with animals you would not expect to find here, from gazelles to Patagonian maras. At the centre is a laboratory where scientists work on some of the most advanced animal biotechnology in the world.
The place has an unmistakable Jurassic Park quality. This is where elite camels are cloned, reproduced with genetic precision for racing, beauty competitions and dairy production across the Gulf. The work is led by scientific director Dr Nisar Ahmad Wani, who in 2009 oversaw the birth of the world’s first cloned camel. “It was really an achievement for us,” Wani says. “And after that, there was no return.”
What began as a research programme has since matured into a tightly controlled biological production system.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of camels in the Gulf — not just culturally and historically, but economically too. The case for cloning starts with sport. “Camel racing is a multimillion-dollar industry here,” Wani says. “So owners want to clone their racing champions.”
Then there’s the beauty contests. In competition rings, animals are judged on precise physical characteristics, and winners can command extraordinary valuations. “There’s huge demand nowadays,” Wani says. “I’m getting calls every day, most of them for these beauty queens. They want to clone them because they know they will get an exact genetic copy of the same donor animal.”
Milk adds another commercial dimension. Large-scale dairies have expanded rapidly across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supplying a product that is increasingly exported beyond the region. “The industry is coming up fast,” Wani says. “You see people in most European countries starting to like camel milk now because of its medicinal properties. If there’s a camel that can produce 30 litres of milk, there is huge demand to clone them.”
Across all three sectors, the appeal is consistency. And what’s more consistent than an exact copy?
The science behind camel cloning follows the same principles used in other species, but in Dubai, the protocols were developed almost entirely in-house. When Wani arrived in 2003, camel reproductive science was still largely unexplored. “I was trying to screen the literature available, but I couldn’t see much written about camels,” he says. “And even if there was something, it was very controversial.”
With no established playbook, the team began assembling one step by step, from basic egg maturation to embryo development. “By 2005, I had the basics – like how much time it takes for the eggs, which I collect from the slaughterhouse, to mature in the lab. Then how much time it takes them to develop into embryos.”
Even protocols borrowed from cattle didn’t translate cleanly to camels. “We had to devise our own culture protocols as well.” By the late 2000s, the lab was ready to attempt embryo transfers. “It was in 2009 that we produced the first baby, which was called Injaz,” Wani adds.
Today, the lab produces dozens of cloned camels each year.
The process starts with an egg cell, and a reset. “We remove the DNA from the eggs under a very high-magnification microscope and use them as an empty shell,” explains Wani.
DNA is then taken from a somatic cell, usually skin, of the camel selected for cloning and injected into the emptied egg. But because that DNA comes from a specialised cell, it has to be chemically coaxed into doing a different job. “This DNA is programmed for making skin, so we have to activate it to start behaving like an embryonic cell,” says Wani. “We do it with chemicals.”
Once activated, the embryo begins dividing. It is placed into an incubator designed to replicate the conditions of a womb. After six to eight days, embryos that are developing normally are transferred into surrogate camels once their cycles have been synchronised.
“We then have to wait,” Wani explains, “because camels have a 13-month gestation period. But if we’re lucky, we get a baby after 13 months which is an exact genetic copy of the donor cell.”
Outside commercial breeding, Wani says the same cloning techniques can be used for conservation and biomedical research.
In 2017, his team successfully cloned the critically endangered Bactrian camel, a double-humped species native to Mongolia and parts of China. “They said there were only about 200 left in the wild,” he explains. “I was trying to see if we can use this technology to conserve this animal species. I got some cells from these Bactrian camels and used their DNA with eggs from our Arabian camels here, which only have one hump, to produce embryos. And we produced babies.”
Wani argues the applications don’t stop at copying animals. “This technology can even be used for genetic modifications.” For example, his team can isolate genes linked to resistance against specific diseases, then inject them or incorporate them into supplements, an approach aimed at developing healthier livestock.
He also points to a more unusual scientific interest: camel antibodies, known as nanobodies, which researchers have explored for their potential medical uses. “These antibodies are smaller than those found in other animals,” Wani says. “They can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and reach areas where other antibodies can’t.”
Like artificial intelligence, cloning is advancing faster than the rules meant to govern it. Its potential applications are clear: preserving endangered species, improving food production and contributing to medical research. At the same time, it raises difficult questions about how far biotechnology should be allowed to go, and who gets to decide.
For now, those questions sit alongside the daily work: lab routines, embryo transfers and newborn calves inside a high-security facility on the edge of Dubai’s desert.
