Adult cell cloning
Adult cell cloning involves replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg with the nucleus from a different cell. The replacement nucleus can come from an embryo, but if it comes from an adult cell, it is called adult cell cloning.
'Dolly the sheep' was the first mammal to be cloned using adult cell cloning. She was born in the UK in 1996 and died in 2003. Here’s how she was produced:
Advantages
Adult cell cloning can be really useful for us. This technique can be used for transplantation of tissues and organs, gene therapy and genetic manufacturing of organisms. Diseases which occur in cells could also be cured or eradicated if cell cloning is performed. We can also create the perfect species.
Adult cell cloning involves replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg with the nucleus from a different cell. The replacement nucleus can come from an embryo, but if it comes from an adult cell, it is called adult cell cloning.
'Dolly the sheep' was the first mammal to be cloned using adult cell cloning. She was born in the UK in 1996 and died in 2003. Here’s how she was produced:
- An egg cell was removed from the ovary of an adult female sheep, and its nucleus removed.
- The nucleus from an udder cell of a donor sheep was inserted into the empty egg cell.
- The fused cell then began to develop normally, using genetic information from the donated DNA.
- Before the dividing cells became specialised, the embryo was implanted into the uterus of a foster mother sheep. The result was Dolly, genetically identical to the donor sheep.
Advantages
- You can make the optimum or best animal each time through cloning. In this type of cloning, the egg cell and skin cell from the best animals are used to produce the best and healthy offspring.
- We can clone animals that have been genetically modified to produce useful proteins in their milk through adult cell cloning. This would give us a good way of producing large numbers of cloned, medically useful animals.
- You can prevent inherited diseases. We can keep cloning a healthy animal so all of its clones would be healthy and the numbers of disease-free animals is much greater.
- This technique could be used to help save animals from extinction if they are endangered or even bring back animals that have died many years ago. This means we can clone prized pets so they continue to exist even after the original pet had died.
- It could be used to help infertile couples when we clone human babies.
- We can use these clones for testing, such as testing a new drug or a new cosmetic product as there would be a fair test. They would all be the same gender, age and would react similarly if not the same to these drugs. This will help us to see the affect of the independent variable on the dependent variable in the test.
- Some people argue, especially religious groups, that it is not natural and going against God's will.
- This technique is very expensive and skilled to do. The equipment used is expensive and this adds to the cost.
- You cannot improve the offspring any further because it will be the same genes each time.
- It is difficult and unreliable. It is very wasteful as most of the attempts to clone an animal are unsuccessful.
- This method, if used to clone human babies can be abused as people might want to have clones of themselves.
- Variety is greatly reduced. Cloning will produce lots of plants and animals with identical genes so the population is less able to survive if there is a change in the environment. In a more natural population, one of two members have the ability to survive difficult conditions.
Adult cell cloning can be really useful for us. This technique can be used for transplantation of tissues and organs, gene therapy and genetic manufacturing of organisms. Diseases which occur in cells could also be cured or eradicated if cell cloning is performed. We can also create the perfect species.
Animal cloning raises ethical issues about how far humans should be allowed to interfere in the production of new life. Regulations currently restrict scientific research into human cloning. Some people believe it is not natural to clone and interfering with God's plans. People are ok with cloning animals that are endangered so they wouldn't not die out. However, attempting to clone an extinct woolly mammoth from preserved tissue gets more negative responses. People think this is interfering with nature as we haven't caused their death. Animals such as the Dodo bird who we have killed can be brought back. In my opinion, we are allowed to clone and there is nothing wrong with it if it's done to help humans and animals.
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