The World of Clones

By: Jarod Farrow

For a long time cloning has been seen as impossible and farfetched. It has appeared in movies such as Star Wars, Spliced, Judge Dredd, and Jurassic Park.  Nowadays cloning is being studied and tested. Some breakthroughs have already been made where as we now possess the ability to clone animals to eat. Cloning is a process that can change the world because of its ability to recreate something multiple times repeatedly .

First of all cloning has three different attributes: Reproductive, Gene, and Therapeutic. Reproductive cloning consists of taking a fully grown somatic cell from the subject to be cloned and an egg cell, taking the nucleus out of the egg cell and inserting the nucleus of the somatic cell into the egg cell (What is Genetics). The new cell is then made to reproduce and grow bigger where it is then put in a surrogate mother (What is Genetics). After growing and birth, the new subject will look just like the somatic cell donor.  The reasoning behind this is that the nucleus of the egg cell wasn’t used and was replaced (What is Genetics). The F.D.A. has approved of cloned animals being used to make food (Pollack).

The second type is Therapeutic cloning. While Therapeutic cloning is a lot like Reproductive cloning, it doesn’t deal with animals. Therapeutic cloning is where scientists try to clone cells with the same DNA of the donor cell (Cloning). Therapeutic cloning is most oftenly used by scientists to replicate diseases in a controlled area so the disease can be studied and investigated without the risk of human life (Cloning). So far to date there has not been any hope of cloning a human yet.

Lastly the third type of cloning is Gene cloning. Gene cloning is where scientists put the gene of one organism like an animal cell and put it into a different organism (Cloning). The new organism is then studied and put into a habitat that will make it most likely to reproduce making the gene copy itself multiple times (Cloning).

Cloning truly is a marvel of science in its ability to recreate a living organism from a simple cell. Cloning has many uses to us in this day and age; food, cures, and many others can be brought about through cloning. In the past, the thought of cloning was preposterous, but today it is considered an actual branch of scientific evolution.

Bibliography

Cloning. 18 4 2012 <http://www.genome.gov/25020028#al-1>.

Pollack, Andrew. "F.D.A. Says Food From Cloned Animals Is Safe ." New York Times (2008): 1.

What is Genetics. 12 4 2012 <http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/>.