What makes something a clone

Programs are underway to clone agricultural animals, such as cattle and pigs, that are efficient producers of high-quality milk or meat. A group of researchers at Utah State University led by Dr. Their aim isn't to produce animals for consumption—cloning is far more labor-intensive and expensive than conventional breeding methods.

Instead, they want to use these animals as breeding stock. The important thing to know about beef cattle is that the quality and yield of their meat can be assessed only after they are slaughtered. And male animals are routinely neutered when they're a few days old. That is, their testes are removed, so they are unable to make sperm. But cells from a high-quality carcass can be cloned, giving rise to an animal that is able, though conventional breeding methods, to pass its superior genes to its offspring.

Scientists have also cloned mules, a reproductively sterile hybrid of a male donkey and a female horse; dairy cows; and horses. One gelded racing horse, a male whose testes have been removed, has a clone that is available for breeding. Some of the cloned cows produce about twice as much milk as the average producer.

And a cloned racing mule is ranked among the best in the world. Farm animals such as cows, sheep, and goats are being genetically engineered to produce drugs or proteins that are useful in medicine. As an example, scientists could take cells from a cow that produces large amounts of milk and grow them in culture. Then they could insert a gene into the DNA of these cells that codes for a drug or a vaccine.

If they take the nucleus from one of these cells and transfer it to a cow egg, it could develop into a cow that makes the drug in its milk. Since every cell in the cow would carry the drug gene, it could pass the gene to its offspring, creating a whole herd of drug-producing cows. Even better, we could avoid the issue of the genetic reshuffling that happensduring sexual reproduction and simply clone our drug-producing cow.

The prospect of cloning humans is highly controversial, and it raises a number of ethical, legal, and social challenges that need to be considered.

The vast majority of scientists and lawmakers view human reproductive cloning—cloning for the purpose of making a human baby—immoral. Supporters see it as a possible solution to infertility problems. Some even imagine making clones of geniuses, whose work could advance society. Far-fetched views describe farms filled with clones whose organs are harvested for transplantation—a truly horrific idea. For now, risks and technical challenges—as well as laws that make it illegal—will probably keep human reproductive cloning from becoming a reality.

Even though many species have been cloned successfully, the process is still technically difficult and inefficient. The success rate in cloning is quite low: most embryos fail to develop, and many pregnancies end in miscarriage. Current efforts at human cloning are focused on creating embryonic stem cells for research and medicine, as described above.

However, many feel that this type of therapeutic cloning comes dangerously close to human reproductive cloning. And once techniques become more streamlined and efficient, they fear that some may be tempted to take that next step. From a technical and moral standpoint, before human cloning becomes routine, we need to have a good idea of the risks involved.

Home Cloning Why Clone? Why Clone? Cloning in Medicine. Cloning animal models of disease Much of what researchers learn about human disease comes from studying animal models such as mice.

Cloning to make stem cells Stem cells build, maintain, and repair the body throughout our lives. Find out more about Stem Cells. Reviving Endangered or Extinct Species. In reality? Probably not. That embryo is implanted into the uterus of a surrogate dam a livestock term that breeders use to refer to the female parent of an animal to grow just as if it came from embryo transfer or in vitro fertilization.

No, not at all. A clone produces offspring by sexual reproduction just like any other animal. A farmer or breeder can use natural mating or any other assisted reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization to breed clones, just as they do for other farm animals. The offspring are not clones, and are the same as any other sexually-reproduced animals. They have the same genes, but look a little different.

Human identical twins also have the same genes, but because those genes are expressed differently in each person, they have different freckle and fingerprint patterns. Temperament is only partly determined by genetics; a lot has to do with the way an animal has been raised. Say you want to clone your horse because of his gentle and sweet temperament.

But if your clone has a bad experience with loud noises for instance, a tree branch falls on him in a loud thunderstorm and hurts him , he may associate loud noises with pain and be afraid of them. Clones are born the same way as other newborn animals: as babies.

No one really knows what causes aging in mammals, but most scientists think it has to do with a part of the chromosome called a telomere that functions as a kind of clock in the cell. Telomeres tend to be long at birth, and shorten as the animal ages. A study on Dolly the famous sheep clone showed that her telomeres were the shorter length of her older donor, even though Dolly was much younger. Studies of other clones have shown that telomeres in clones are shorter in some tissues in the body, and are age-appropriate in other tissues.

Still other studies of clones show that telomeres are age-appropriate in all of the tissues. Despite the length of telomeres reported in different studies, most clones appear to be aging normally. In fact, the first cattle clones ever produced are alive, healthy, and are 10 years old as of January The vast majority of swine and goat clones are born healthy, grow normally, and are no more susceptible to health problems than their non-clone counterparts.

During the early days of what is known as assisted reproductive technologies in livestock, veterinarians noticed that some calf and lamb fetuses grew too large during pregnancy, and had serious birth defects. These same abnormalities have also been seen in calf and lamb clones, and have received a lot of attention because they occur at what appear to be higher rates than observed with other assisted reproductive technologies.

The syndrome seems to be related to processes that take place outside the body during the in vitro phase. Scientists test new medicines on cells taken from the embryos before trying the medicines on animals and real people. Tel: Email: info centreofthecell. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.

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