Author’s Note: “This is a research essay going to my next
conference and my topic is going to be on cloning and the different types and
the whole process and the risks of it. “
You may not believe it but there are human clones among
us right now! They weren’t made in a lab either they are called identical
twins. There are many ways to clone things or people. There is two ways to
clone and that’s Artificial Embryo Twinning and that’s basically an identical
twin because they have the same DNA as the other identical twin. I
find it really cool that if you have an identical twin they will have the same
DNA as you.
It’s
pretty clear that not all of us have a twin and if you have one well you
practically struck gold. Twins occur after fertilization of an egg cell by
what’s called a sperm cell. In very rare cases, when the fertilized egg called
a zygote, tries to divide into a two celled embryo, the cells separate. Both of
the cells continue dividing on its own, developing into a separate
individual within the mother. Remember the two cells came from the same zygote?
Well then the individuals are genetically identical.
Beyond that
though, there are many other ways of cloning. One way of cloning is Therapeutic
cloning and that is also called “embryo cloning”. The goal in this type of
clone is not to create cloned human beings but to harvest the stem cells and
that can be used to study human development and to treat multiple diseases.
Stem cells are important to researchers because they can be used to generate
virtually any type of cell in the human body. Stem cells are in the egg after
it has divided for 4 to 5 days. When the egg is at the development stage it’s
called a blastocyst. The process destroys the embryo, which raises a lot of
concerns around the globe. Researchers hope that one day these cells can be
used to replace cells to treat heart disease and maybe even cancer.
Next
there is reproduction cloning and that is basically a technology that is used
to generate an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or
previously existing animal. The process of this type of cloning is very hard
and it is quite hard to make this process work correctly.
Dolly the sheep, was made for this type of cloning and this sheep died by the
cloning process and that’s why they don’t use that as much as the gene cloning.
To build off that
topic, the risks of cloning are the reasons why most people turn it down. The
first thing is Reproductive cloning and that’s way too expensive and very
highly inefficient. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail so then the process
starts all over and after that it will probably fail again and that’s the
reason why they turn down Reproductive cloning.
In conclusion, it is very obvious
that cloning is an awesome topic in my opinion at least. I find it really cool that if
you have an identical twin they will have the same DNA as you. I
really want to learn more about this type of cloning and cloning by itself.
Bibliography
Cloning.
(n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2012, from National Human Genome Research
Institute : http://www.genome.gov/25020028#al-3
Human Genome Project Information. (2009, May 11). Retrieved
April 18th, 2012, from Cloning Fact Sheet:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml#whatis
What is cloning? (2012). Retrieved April
18, 2012, from Learn.Genetics:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/
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