Cloning
CloningThe topic of cloning has much confusion and controversy behind it. Some people have heard of the sheep named Dolly, she was the first organism to be successfully cloned. Also pigs have been cloned, to be used for transplants. Cloning has many goals and purposes to achieve. People are hoping to bring back loved ones for reunions, help endangered species, or just have a friend. Although this may sound nice and also a great idea, but there will be consequences learned and cloning just might be a bad idea.
The first thing to get cleared up is what is cloning and what is a clone. Cloning is the technique of producing a genetically identical duplicate of an organism. A clone is said to be all descendents derived asexually from a single individual, as by cuttings, bulbs, fission, mitosis, or by parthenogenesis reproduction.
The scientific technology of cloning is the artificial production of organisms with the same genetic information. The technology behind cloning is called nuclear transfer. Nuclear transfer transfers a nucleus from one cell to an enucleated cell. The outcome of this transfer will make an organism with the exact genetic information as the donor cell. Scientists are currently using this technology and with many species. Although people think clones are only artificially made, there is more to cloning that meets the eye.
Many people misunderstand the word clone. Clones are present in human life as well as nature. Clones are the organisms with the same genetic information as another organism. That does not mean they have to be artificially made. Currently all plants, some insects, algae’s, unicellular organisms that perform mitosis, and some multicellular organisms including humans produce clones. There are approximately eight million identical twins in the world, therefore there are eight million human clones living on earth. Identical twins have the same genetic information due to the embryo splitting during early development producing two organisms, therefore making them clones.
Cloning has a short but rather amazing history. People actually attempted cloning at the beginning of the 20th century. Sea urchins, frogs, sheep and other organisms were used to try to perfect cloning.
Cloning has been attempted many times. The first attempt was made by Adolf Eduard Driesch. Driesch could let the eggs of a sea urchin into a two-blastomere stage. Then he separated them by shaking the flask and allowing them to grow. The cells developed into dwarf sea urchins and Driesch could not explain the reasoning. In 1952 Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King made the second attempt. They successfully planted a nucleus into an egg cell. They had transferred the nuclei into the egg of a leopard frog. Unfortunately the egg cells did not develop. A successful transfer of the nucleus occurred later in the 1970s; it was accomplished by John Gurdon....
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