| Cloning - A new era in medical science |
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Cloning Pros
Developments in animal biotechnology could have a great impact on human health and agriculture. Firms are currently developing transgenic animals, or animals whose genomes have been altered by the transfer of genes from another animal, to provide organs for human transplantation and proteins for pharmaceutical production. In addition, studies will help limit environmental harm from detrimental agricultural practices and improve traits such as disease resistance. The purpose of transgenic livestock is to produce animals with the ideal characteristics for the agricultural industry. Change in the phenotype of livestock is often accomplished by bombarding embryos of livestock with genes containing the preferred traits. However, this technique is highly inefficient; only 5% of the offspring actually express the traits. If the efficiency of cloning were sufficiently improved, cloning from an adult cell would make it easier to alter the genetic material. Researchers can harvest and grow adult cells in large amounts compared to embryos. Scientists can then genetically alter these cells and find which ones did. |