Reproductive Animal Cloning
Reproductive cloning has been going on in the natural world for thousands of years. A clone is simply one living thing made from another, leading to two organisms with the same set of genes. In that sense, identical twins are clones, because they have identical DNA. Sometimes, plants are self-pollinated, producing seeds and eventually more plants with the same genetic code. Some forests are made entirely of trees originating from one single plant; the original tree spread its roots, which later sprouted new trees. When earthworms are cut in half, they regenerate the missing parts of their bodies, leading to two worms with the same set of genes. However, the ability to intentionally create a clone in the animal kingdom by working on the cellular level is a very recent development. Clones are biological copies of normal animals. Although the technology to clone farm animals was developed more than 20 years ago, today's method of cloning’s are: splitting of embryo, somatic cell nuclear transfer has been around only since 1996. there are different other types of cloning such as: DNA cloning, & Therapeutic cloning.
Dolly the sheep was the world’s most famous clone. She was the first sheep to be cloned from an adult cell than just an embryo. She was cloned by Ian Wilmut & Keith Campbell in
HOW THEY PRODUECED DOLLY
To produce Dolly, the scientists used the nucleus of an udder cell from a Finn Dorset white sheep. & the unfertilized egg cell from a Scottish Blackface ewe. The nucleus contained nearly all the cell's genes. They had to find a way to reproduce the udder cells to keep them alive, but stop them growing. they achieved this by altering the growth medium where the cell’s were kept alive. Then injected the cell into an unfertilized egg cell with nucleus removed, and made the cells fuse by using electrical pulses. The unfertilized egg cell came from a Scottish Blackface ewe. When the scientists had managed to fuse the nucleus from the adult white sheep cell with the egg cell from the black-faced sheep, they needed to make sure that the resulting cell would develop into an embryo. They cultured it for six or seven days to see if it divided and developed normally, before implanting it into a surrogate mother. From 277 cell fusions, 29 early embryos developed and were implanted into 13 surrogate mothers. But only one pregnancy went to full term, and the 6.6kg Finn Dorset lamb was born after 148 days.
HOW IT CAN BE USED
“Reliable cloning can be used to make farming more productive by replicating the best animals. It can make medical testing more accurate by providing test subjects that all react the same way to the same drug. It can also allow mass production of genetically altered animals, plants, and bacteria. It may settle once and for all what part of personality is dependent on genetics and what part on environment.” Cloning can be beneficial to almost every area of biological science.
