The cloning of animals has come a long way since Dolly the sheep was cloned. The

Question

The cloning of animals has come a long way since Dolly the sheep was cloned. There have been many advances including the cloning of livestock, pets, and even human embryos.

In 2002, Genetic Savings and Clone (GSC) funded research at Texas A&M University that led to the birth of the world's first cloned cat, a healthy kitten named CC (as in "CopyCat”). In 2004, GSC began offering the first ever cat cloning service to the payable public and claimed that dog cloning services would be next. GSC closed its doors at the end of 2006, but early 2009 saw the birth of the first cloned dogs by other biotech companies (http://www.bioarts.com/downloads/bai_lancelot_press_release_1-26-09.pdf (Links to an external site.)). UPDATE: http://www.bioartsinternational.com/press_release/ba09_09_09.htm (Links to an external site.)

In non-commercial cloning, mice have been cloned from adult mouse skin stem cells. In late 2007, a research team in the U.S. cloned primate embryos and were able to extract stem cells (Byrne, 2007). As great of a success as this was, they were also able to force the stem cells to develop into heart and nerve cells. In January 2008, another U.S. company, Stemagen, claimed to have cloned human embryos using skin cells, which they then destroyed before attempting to extract stem cells.

Questions to consider: please be specific as match as you can

-What do you think of the recent advances in cloning? Should we be cloning animals for food, for pets, and/or endangered animals?

-Is cloning humans ethical? What about therapeutic cloning for the purpose of creating stem cells?

Explanation / Answer

1) Cloning is the best technique generally used for animals.Mostly the cloning technique is commonly used for sheep.There are various advancements based on cloning techniques and one of the most important and advanced technique use by current days is SOMATIC CELL NUCLEAR TRANSFER (SCNT). SCNT is the sole reproductive engineering technology that endows the somatic cell genome with totipotency.Since the first report on the birth of a cloned sheep from adult somatic cells in 1997, many technical improvements in SCNT have been made by using different epigenitic approaches, including enhancement of the levels of histone acetylation in the chromation of reconstructed embryos.

There are some future prospects :

a) Posiibility of resurrecting an extinct animal.

b)Possibility of selecting high-quality embryos before transfer

c) Nuclear transfer techniques for analysing germ cell epigenetics.

Yes cloning is not at all dangerous for animals. It helps in producing various types of new breeds from animals like dog,cat,horse,sheeps etc..

2) Ethical issues of human cloning have become an important issue in recent years. Many ethical arguments against human cloning are based on misconceptions. Many people think that these clones will have the same characteristics / personalities as the person cloned. Although clone and cloned individual have the same genes, traits and personalities are different. People think that a clone is physically identical to the donor and her behavior, but this is not true because although there is a physical identity, living environment shapes an individual's ongoing behavior and psychology. Many people believe that cloning will lead to loss of individuality eventually, but people have their own personality cloned which personality is similar to those in which they were created.

Though cloning of humans is ethical in some countries (very few) , most of the countries arround 23 says that cloning of humans is illegal.

Legalizing therapeutic cloning as the only way to investigate, with chances of success, the basic criterion for funding such programs as the main objective being to find treatments for incurable diseases. The cloning of human organs and their use for transplantation or cloning human beings must be taken into account technical and economic barriers.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse T
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.