what is cloning?

Question

Please tell me everything you know about it!

Answer 1

I can't tell you everything (well, I could, but it would probably bore your socks off), so permit me to summarize:

Cloning is basically producing a genetically identical copy of living tissue. In a sense, you're making a twin. It doesn't necessarily mean the production of a whole human being - many scientists are working on just producing one tissue or organ.

It has a lot of potential applications. If we have tissue that is cloned from your own DNA, then there is no possibility of rejection. This could make existing surgeries (heart or skin transplants) much easier, and impossible operations (capillary replacement or neural regeneration) possible.

Likewise, it has a lot of commercial aspects. If you have a goat that's been genetically engineered to produce insulin in its milk for diabetics (this has been done already, by the way), it would be much more beneficial to clone such a goat a hundred times rather than engineer a new goat each time or trust normal breeding to not mess things up. Or if some animal is born that is otherwise massively beneficial, it might be reproduced as well. Those in favor of eugenics might use it to clone brilliant people so the world might have more of them.

Right now the PROCESS of cloning is far from perfect. It involves sucking the DNA out of a living cell and replacing it with the DNA from the organism you want to copy. This is no small task! Then you need to get your modified cell to grow and reproduce. This is why cells from embryos are most often sought for cloning - these cells have contents that have already been prepared for rapid growth and multiplication, as opposed to your typical body cell with is more set for just living its span and dying.

As you can see, NONE of the DNA comes from the original egg, NOR does the implanted DNA have to have any particular qualities. You can clone men as easily as women, and altered DNA as easily as 'natural' DNA.

And that is where many of the ethical concerns arise. A cell with its DNA removed is still alive... but it's not really the same cell. And certainly an embryo with all its cells removed for seperate projects is no longer an embryo, again even if all those individual cells survive. Are any of these processes 'killing' something? The matter is probably more one of belief than of biology. Make up your own mind!

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Cloning means making an exact replica, or copy, of something. In the world of animal biology, it means reproduction without the traditional combining of sperm and egg, but by division of the egg. That means the resultant animal will be an exact duplicate of its mother. And the cloned animal will always be female, because that's where the egg comes from.
In the plant world, it also means cell division. Some special types of plants are cloned -- grown from cells -- so the new plants are exact replicas of the parent plant. For example, prize winning orchids, or new strains or colours of flowers, can be cloned to preserve that variation.
That's not quite all I know about about it, but it gives you a general idea of what cloning is.

Answer 3

Cloning is making an exact copy of something or someone. You taje the DNA of something and use that DNA and make another one. What you do is you put the DNA sample in a controled enviroment and, like all cells, it willmultiply to form a more complex being. Probably an egg cell would do the trick.

Answer 4

When a sperm units with an egg they both contribute half of the genetics that make up the offspring.

With cloning, there is no sperm. The egg or cell is forced to divide alone thereby replicating itself because there wasn't any material contributed by sperm.

Answer 5

taking cells out of a living being, and culturing them in a lab to create a new being exactly the same as the original.

Answer 6

give me a break..