how to clone in ur kitchen essays

how to clone in ur kitchen essays Cloning is the production of multiple, identical offspring. A clone is an animal who is genetically identical to its donor "parent". We now know that this can be achieved using cells derived from a microscopic embryo, a fetus, or from an adult animal. Cloning from adult animals was introduced to the public in 1997 when scientists announced the birth of Dolly, the first animal cloned in this way. There have now been hundreds of clones produced from skin cells taken from adult sheep, cattle, goats, pigs and mice. The real key to cloning an adult animal is the ability to reprogram the skin cell nucleus and cause it to begin developing as if it was a newly fertilized egg. Cloning requires specialized microsurgery tools and involves five basic steps: 1. Enucleation of the recipient egg 2. Transfer of the donor cell into the recipient egg 3. Fusion of the donor cell to the recipient egg 4. Culturing the resulting cloned embryo in the incubator 5. Transferring the developing embryo into the reproductive tract of a surrogate mother Step 3 - Fusion of the Donor Cell to the Recipient Egg The egg and the donor cell are placed in the fusion chamber between 2 electrodes. A low electrical current is passed across the positive and negative electrode. This electrical charge causes the membrane of the donor cell to fuse with the membrane of the enucleated recipient egg. When the 2 membranes fuse together, the nucleus (containing all the genetic material from the donor animal) of the skin cell is now surrounded by the recipient egg. The offspring that result from this procedure are genetically identical to the donor animal that the skin biopsy was taken from. In this case, all five of these goats are clones, produced from the same donor cell line. They are genetically identical to each other and to their donor "parent". They are different ages because the cloned embryos were made and transferred to surroga ...