In The Past:
In Our Time:
In The Future:
Cloning in biology is what happens when populations start being produced of genetically-identical individuals. This happens in nature when organisms reproduce asexually. Cloning can alsobe done in biotechnology. For this there are three ways of cloning: molecular cloning, cell cloning and organism cloning.
Molecular cloning is done by making multiple copies of a defined DNA sequence.
-
Cell cloning is done by getting an entire population of cells out of just a single one
-
Organism cloning is the procedure of creating a new multi-cellular organism which is identical to another
Cloning is a technology which has been around for ages, but first it wasonlywith plants. This is because they didn’t have enoughknowledge to try otherorganisms in those times. They have to know a lot about the cells before they could start, and this wasn’t the case yet back then. Biologists are nowtrying to clone animals, to see which faults are made and how theyshould be repaired. Also they have to figure out which cells are needed to clone differentsorts of animals. The best cloned animaluntil now was Dolly, the sheep. She looked just like a real sheep, also withsheep characteristics. However, Dolly had a lot of side effects. There were a lot of diseases and finally they had to do a euthanasia procedure, because Dolly was suffering from an incurable lung disease. This is one of the possible side effects. Some people say therisk is too high to continue trying, while others say that they can minimize the risks and it can later be a cure for other diseases and problems. People against cloning believe that it is unethically right to use a clone’s life to save a human’s. Biologists hope that later on, we will be able to clone organs which could be used as donors, so that donors will eventually be unnecessary. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of time before cloned organs can actually be used. They first have to complete the experiments with the animals, before we can start with humans because we still don’t know how big the chance is of making a fully cloned and good human. The goal is to be able to clone entire humans, so that we don’t need actual humans anymore for experiments with new drugs and cures. This will help us a lot in the future, as we don’t need to be as afraid as we are now for the effects of the drugs. Also we can observe diseases better, as we can then inject them into the clone. Then we can see how harmful the diseases are and how they develop. This will give a better vision of how to stop the disease, which can later on be used on real humans.
[Milena]
Picture: www.vltavastudios.com/dna/dolly.shtml