Why were the donor mammary cells starved of nutrients before Dolly was cloned?

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cloning The first clone of an adult mammal, Dolly the sheep, at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh.

In the process of creating Dolly, researchers at the Roslin Institute starved the donor mammary cells of nutrients to induce them to abandon their normal cycle of growth and division. By withholding nutrients, the scientists forced the cells to enter a quiescent stage, a state of dormancy that was necessary for the mammary cell nucleus to be accepted and functional within the host egg cell.1

While the researchers determined the importance of this step experimentally, a definitive biological explanation for why this specific state was required remained lacking at the time. This procedure was a critical component of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the technique used to successfully clone an adult mammal for the first time.12