The Power of cloning
Cloning can occur naturally, but this mainly happens with bacteria. Bacteria does this thing that is called asexual reproduction and causes it to reproduce the exact same copy as before. “When they clone an animal, first they take skin cells from the animal to be cloned. Then, they take an unfertilized egg from the adult female of the same species and remove the nucleus of the egg which contains the other half of the DNA, leaving the mothers egg empty. After that they put the clone’s DNA into the female’s egg and that is how fertilization begins.” (Ades Jane)
We’ve all heard of Dolly the cloned sheep who was born on the 5th of July, 1996. Dolly was the first clone to actually come out without any defects. Dolly only got to live for six years because she died of some type of lung disease. Now this was a very young age she died at, most sheep’s can live up to 12-14 years. Some researches believe that Dolly died because she got contaminated with a virus that caused her the lung disease. Others believe that because Dolly’s mother was six years old when she got clone that that made an impact on Dolly’s life spam, saying that if Dolly’s mother would have been twelve years old when they cloned her maybe Dolly would have lived twelve years. Since Dolly’s death many other animals have been cloned. “Cows have been cloned more than other animals because obtaining eggs from the cow is slightly easier than for swine, said geneticist Bill Muir of Purdue University,
Cloning is real and possible. To clone an animal, researchers first remove a mature somatic cell such as a
Cloning is a number of processes that are used to create genetically identical copies of an organism. Researchers have cloned a number of biological materials, such as genes, cells, tissues and whole organisms, including sheep 's and horses. Cloning can happen naturally in identical twins, but it can also be done in a lab. ("Cloning Fact Sheet").
This gave many people suspicion that cloned animals aged prematurely. However, a daily anti-inflammatory treatment resolved the clinical signs within a few months. While Dolly was continuing to get better, in January of 2001, Cedric, one of the cloned sheep, died. Cedric died of Sheep Pulmonary Adenomatosis, which is caused by a virus that induces tumors to grow in the lungs of affected animals. The virus is infectious and spread to other sheep by close contact. Scientist immediately removed Dolly from the pen even though there was a good chance she was already infected. Dolly did die of SPA after many, many months of the other sheep deaths. While this may seem like a negative, it is actually a common disease of regular conceived sheep. This long and effective research experiment showed many people in the science world that cloning animals has a very bright future.(The Roslin Institute)
Clones are organisms that are exact genetic copies. Cloning originally started in the year of 1885, when a German scientist named Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch began researching reproduction. The process of producing a clone began a hundred years ago. There’s many different types of clones such as, natural clones, molecular clones, organism clones and even therapeutic clones. The first organism cloned was a salamander created by Hans Adolf. Years later, Robert Briggs and Thomas Joseph King clones a frog. Then, there was a famous organism cloned by the of name Dolly, who was the first animal sheep cloned. In order to understand the creation of life one must
Cloning in animals is described as “number of different processes that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a biological entry” (“Cloning Fact Sheets”). In animal cloning, a wide variety of biological aspects have been cloned such as genes and tissues. Upon researching this subject, some of the most commonly asked questions was about if and how do clones happen naturally? In nature, there has been a long history of mutations and “natural” clones. Cloning is commonly seen in asexual reproduction as bacteria often reproduce identical copies. A real-life example of natural clones is seen in identical twins. These twins are seen as identical copies as well observed in both humans and other mammals.
They took a cell from an adult sheep’s udder and extracted the DNA. It was then put into a “blank” cell. This was the first time an adult cell had been used instead of an embryo cell. Adult cells do not have as much DNA as embryo cells. After 277 attempts an embryo was finally produced. Six days later the cells were transferred into a surrogate mother. The pregnancy progressed like normal and Dolly, named after singer Dolly Parton, was born on July 5th, 1996. Dolly lived for six years, which is only half the lifespan of a normal sheep. Dolly even had lambs. This first cloning led to many discussions about the morals of cloning. Animals cloned can have various health defects. The discussion even was presented that if humans were cloned they would lack personality and emotions. While humans haven’t been cloned great gains have been
As for reproductive cloning the entire genetic code is reproduced from a single body cell of an adult individual. The most common technique is somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Scientist first take the somatic cell from the test subject they plan to clone, extract the cell’s nucleus, which includes the cell’s DNA and throw away the rest. Then they remove the nucleus of an egg cell and replace it with the somatic cell. After that step is complete they reconstruct the egg with a blast of electricity to simulate cell division. If the process is done correctly the cell then divides normally and forms a blastocyst, therefore, scientist will transfer it into a foster mother for her to flourish a new animal.
Cloning, an ethical issue that has been pressed across the globe, has become a substantial debate throughout a majority of nations. The incorporation of a new type of reproduction in the United States has a plentiful amount of benefits for certain animals and objects, but duplicates of humans is hard to comprehend for many people across America. Currently, cloning is an interesting topic that could become a new way to improve reproduction of animals and humans, prevent diseases, and increase the overall health of Americans.
The sheep named Dolly was successfully cloned from an adult somatic cell using the above laboratory technique. She was cloned by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (Edwards, 1999). The experiment started with 277 fused eggs but only 29 fused eggs became fertilized. The fertilized eggs were transferred into 13 sheep, however only one sheep became pregnant successfully. The other remaining 12 sheep failed to pregnant and several dead fetuses were then discovered from them. The successful clone, Dolly was born on July 5, 1996. Unfortunately, Dolly only live up to the age of six which is
The idea of cloning has been around for decades, and some scientist have even utilized this process. In the story Brave New World by Aldous Huxley the author presents the process of cloning by using hatcheries instead of natural reproduction, which no longer exists, to create individuals. Individuals in society are given different doses of lethal drugs to alter development so that they meet the standards based on their pre-determined social classes. The concept of cloning is used to propagate another organism or cell to create an exact copy of its original without the use of natural reproduction. This process has been very successful with the cloning of animals, cells, and even a recent human experiment. In the case of cloning, the power of
Debates about cloning only initiated after the first cloned mammal from an adult somatic cell in 1996 was officially declared a success. The cloned mammal was a sheep named Dolly, which then appeared to suffer from health conditions that ended her life at a young age (Pano, 36). “This ignited a worldwide controversy about whether or not cloned animals die prematurely” (Lew, chapter 1).
The article by Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance”, states that cloning is morally wrong because it puts humans in the place of God. Cloning used to not be a big problem because it was not possible, but with technological advances making it possible, it has become a moral problem. Kass addresses this problem in his article when he writes: “ In a world whose once-given natural boundaries are blurred by technological change and whose moral boundaries are seemingly up for grabs, it is much more difficult to make persuasive the still compelling case against cloning human beings” (18). People are eased into cloning through movies and TV shows. These forms of entertainment have made people more open to the idea of cloning. Over the
Cloning has been a idea since forever. Movies, books, and comics have had cloning in them for centuries. Did you think cloning would actually happen? Well, it did. On July 5th, 1996, Dolly was born. Dolly was a domestic sheep. She was the first mammal cloned using the process of nuclear transfer. She was cloned by Sir Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh. Although Dolly was cloned, health problems were involved. Dolly died from a progressive lung disease 5 months before her seventh birth. Dolly was known as “the world’s most famous sheep.”
“A clone is an identical genetic copy of a biological entity.” (LaPensee, 2012) Clones are defined as an identical genetic copy, however, clones do not always look identical. This is due to the different ways that genes are interpreted and the role the environment plays in how an organism develops (LaPensee, 2012). Although the term 'clone' was not used until 1963 in a speech, the investigation into genetics had begun much earlier with the work of August Weismann in the late 1880s (LaPensee, 2012). Weismann proposed that cell differentiation would reduce the genetic information contained within a cell. This theory pervaded until 1902 when the German embryologist Hans Spelmann showed how split salamander embryos could still grow to adulthood (LaPensee, 2012). The past of cloning has many significant events. The first significant event occurred in 1996 when Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues create the first cloned mammal, a sheep they named Dolly (Back Story, 2013). In 2001, President George W. Bush banned federal funding for research that uses stem cells, with the exception of a small number of existing cell lines. The decision severely restricted stem cell research in the US, this decision was reversed in 2009 by President Barack Obama (Back Story, 2013). A few years later, in 2011, researchers tried to create human embryonic stem cells using nuclear transfer, but the eggs would either stall out after only a few divisions or need an extra set of chromosomes to grow