Cloning Introduction:

What is Cloning? Speaking of controversial issues, how about if we pick cloning as an example? Cloning is one of those issues that has, and probably will not have a final end to it. So, is it ethical or is it not ethical? Can we not overlook this aspect since there are many advantages to it? But then again, a line has to be drawn somewhere, does it not? Before going into the intricacies of cloning and how it is done, a concrete, dictionary definition of what a clone is, must be given in order to prevent any confusion that may occur later on. A clone is defined as "the aggregate of the asexually produced progeny of an individual" as well as "an individual grown from a single somatic cell of its parent and genetically identical to it."(Serendip) To puin simpler words, it is an asexually reproduced offspring who has the same genetic information as another organism or organisms. Organisms that clone themselves include bacteria, most unicellular organisms, plants (not from seed), algae (not all), fungi (not all) as well as many invertebrates.

Cloning is the science hype that will change the face of the future, some of the cloning types include: plants, animals and humans. In this website we are going to be talking about the benefits(pros) and flaws(cons) of cloning and we will discuss some history on cloning.

How cloning is done

Cloning is done by taking the DNA from a host and copying the DNA to make a new copy.

  1. First you need to remove the nucleus from the an unfertilized egg cell.
  2. Then you then take the nucleus from the donor cell, and then inject it into the unfertilized egg cell.
  3. After all the tranfers are completed you must then "acivate" the unfertilized egg cell, by using a chemical or electrical treatment, which is ment to simulate cellular divison.
  4. This division will start to split with two cell, then, then six and so on, now it is an embryo.
  5. with in three days the division process will start, this proliferating cells forms a structure called a blastocyst.
  6. Any animal created using nuclear transfer technology is not truly an identical clone of the donor animal, the only thing is the clone's chrmosomal or nuclear DNA, it wont always have the same characteristics as the donor.

There are three different methods to cloning mammals:

1. The Twinning Technique, which is the splitting of a cell from an embryo. In Twinning, a sperm fertalizes an egg and then is split into as many as eight different cell embryos and then can be implanted into the uterus of eights seperate surrogate mothers, producing eight different clones. When these cells are seperated from the original embryo, that embryo is destroyed in the process- and it is the same procedure used with Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

2. The Roslin Technique, which is also known as Nuclear Transfer and was also used to create Dolly the sheep. Nuclear transfer requires two cells, a donor cell and an egg cell. The egg cell can be taken out either from the donor of the host sheep. The egg cell must be enucleated, or in other words, its nucleus must be taken out. The two cells are then joined using an electric charge and implanted into the host sheep. The cell acts like a normal egg and grows a clone sheep, which is then born just like a normal baby. If no errors occur, a perfect replica of the donor animal will be born.

3. The Honolulu Technique is the newest and most effective method. In this method, the nucleus from a somatic cell is removed and injected into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. The egg is bathed in a chemical solution and cultured. The developing embryo is then implanted into a surrogate and allowed to develope.