DNA Cloning
DNA cloning is the process where an exact replica of an organism is produced. Some scientists have already produced clones of animals; Dolly the sheep is one of the many examples of DNA cloning.
Cloning is a natural process, many living things only need one parent to reproduce, this process is called asexual reproduction; for example single-celled bacterium use this process. The new bacteria inherits its genes from only one parent, this means that their genes are identical to their parents. Genetically identical organisms are called clones, if there is any variation between them will be caused by differences in their environment.
Plants have unspecialized cells; these cells are used to grow into anything the plant may need. However, when an embryo grows in side the womb, cells become specialized, I.e. blood, cells, muscle cells and nerve cells.
Most animals use sexual reproduction. So when offspring are produced using sexual reproduction, the offspring will have genes from both parents so they are not clones. However, sometimes identical twins are produced, by identical we mean that these twins have exactly the same genes.
Cloning Dolly
Already scientists have cloned many animals, the most famous of all id Dolly the sheep. Artificially cloning animals is much harder that letting nature do it.
Dolly was the first cloned sheep to be born. Scientists take a nucleus from an unfertilized sheep egg cell, a nucleus was also taken out of a body cell from a different sheep. The body cell nucleus was put into the empty egg cell. The cell grows to produce a new animal, its genes will be that same as that of the animal that donated the nucleus; therefore it will be a clone of that animal.

DNA cloning is the process where an exact replica of an organism is produced.
What cloning could mean for the future of science.
Cloning could be used to produce an embryo with the same genes as the patient. Stem cells from this embryo would have the same genes as the patient. So cells produced from the embryo would not be rejected by the patient’s body; this process is known as therapeutic cloning.
Doctors have only just started to explore this technology, success is still years away but when the research is finally finished many people could benefit from cloning.
Cloning humans
Scientists are trying to improve methods for cloning animals, in the near future it may even be possible to clone humans.
There are many scientists and members of the public that don’t want scientists to be ale to clone adult humans. However there are some scientists that do want to clone human embryos. They think that some cells from cloned embryos could be used to treat diseases, the cells that are used for this job are called stem cells.
Stem cells are unspecialized cells, this means that they grow into any type of cell in the human body. Stem cells can be taken from embryos that are a few days old, researchers use human embryos that are left over from fertility treatment. Scientists want to grow stem cells to make new cells to treat patients with some diseases. These new cells would have to have the same genes as the person getting the treatment, this is because if someone else’s cells were to be used in a transplant they will be rejected.
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