The cloning of animals has come a long way since Dolly the sheep was cloned. The

Question

The cloning of animals has come a long way since Dolly the sheep was cloned. There have been many advances including the cloning of livestock, pets, and even human embryos.

In 2002, Genetic Savings and Clone (GSC) funded research at Texas A&M University that led to the birth of the world's first cloned cat, a healthy kitten named CC (as in "CopyCat”). In 2004, GSC began offering the first ever cat cloning service to the payable public and claimed that dog cloning services would be next. GSC closed its doors at the end of 2006, but early 2009 saw the birth of the first cloned dogs by other biotech companies (http://www.bioarts.com/downloads/bai_lancelot_press_release_1-26-09.pdf (Links to an external site.)). UPDATE: http://www.bioartsinternational.com/press_release/ba09_09_09.htm (Links to an external site.)

In non-commercial cloning, mice have been cloned from adult mouse skin stem cells. In late 2007, a research team in the U.S. cloned primate embryos and were able to extract stem cells (Byrne, 2007). As great of a success as this was, they were also able to force the stem cells to develop into heart and nerve cells. In January 2008, another U.S. company, Stemagen, claimed to have cloned human embryos using skin cells, which they then destroyed before attempting to extract stem cells.

Questions to consider:

-What do you think of the recent advances in cloning? Should we be cloning animals for food, for pets, and/or endangered animals?

-Is cloning humans ethical? What about therapeutic cloning for the purpose of creating stem cells?

Explanation / Answer

Somatic cell nuclear transfer has been the recent advancement in the cloning technology which includes somatic cell genome with totipotent cell.

Yes, we can but there should be some limitations as cloning helps in the the agricultural products, drug manufacturing, disease treatment etc.

No, human cloning is unethical.

Nucleus is being extracted from the egg as it holds the genetic material of the human after that somatic cell is being taken away. The nucleus extracted from the patient is then inserted into the egg. Then it is allowed to divide and it forms a cluster called blastocyst.

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