Cloning

Cloning

Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another. This means that every single bit of DNA is the same between the two.

Cloning in Animals:

• Copy transgenic organisms
• Keep ideal organisms
• Create large numbers of rare species

Cloning in Humans:

• Organ donor clones
• Children for sterile couples

Dolly the sheep (clone)

Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from adult DNA, was put down by lethal injection Feb. 14, 2003. Prior to her death, Dolly had been suffering from lung cancer and crippling arthritis. Although most Finn Dorset sheep live to be 11 to 12 years of age, postmortem examination of Dolly seemed to indicate that, other than her cancer and arthritis, she appeared to be quite normal. The unnamed sheep from which Dolly was cloned had died several years prior to her creation. Dolly was a mother to six lambs, bred the old-fashioned way.

The process of cloning complex organisms is called
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer

1. The nucleus of a body cell is taken by a tiny pipette (this process is called enucleation)
2. The chromosomes in an egg cell are removed.
3. The nucleus from the body cell is extracted into the egg cell.
4. We wait for couple of hours until the DNA and the egg cell adjusts to one another (the DNA reprograms itself to work as if it was in an egg cell.
5. We now stumulate the cell devision untill the cell reach up to 16, creating an embryo
6. Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a female host where it continues to develop until birth.
7. A clone of the donor of DNA is then born.

Try cloning a mouse yourself

It took the scientist more than 100 attempts before Dolly was born successfully with the new cloning technology.


Should we clone humans?

Cloning an organism copies the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) from the donor organism to a new egg cell which then allows the development of an embryo trough the natural processes. The new organism will have the same features as the donor had due to the same DNA containment throughout the whole body, this brings up quite a few ethical problem dealing with the process of creating a clone and therefore giving it the right to live as a copy of someone, which would lead to a social sigma that would mark it as "The Clone". If a person pays for someone to be cloned, he may want the right to "own" and have all rights on the organism which is said to be unethical and cruel to the clones rights.
Another major issue with cloning is that when the DNA is taken from a donor's cell it has already aged depending on how old the donor is, this then impacts on the Clone as all of the cells contain aged DNA decreasing the clone's life durance.