Cloning???

Question

What are stem cells? And what have they got to do with cloning? But please nothing to complicated.

Answer 1

From the website in the sources:

I've heard of therapeutic cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)—what is that?

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) involves transplanting a patient's genetic material from something as simple as a skin cell into an unfertilized egg in order to grow patient specific stem cells.

No sperm is involved, and therefore no fertilization occurs, in this procedure. Also, because the group of cells from which the stem cells are derived are not implanted in a uterus, no fetus is involved.

SCNT has promise for therapies because the stem cells have identical DNA to the patient, thereby avoiding problems of rejection by the patient's body. SCNT is also a critical tool to create disease-specific cell lines that can be studied in vitro (outside the body) to learn how complex diseases develop and to understand how certain drugs may affect the progression of that disease. The technique has been proven to work in animal cells but has not yet been proven in human cells.

It's still cloning though, isn't it?

There is a big difference between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning.

Reproductive cloning involves creating an embryo and then actually implanting it into a uterus. It is highly unlikely this could work for humans, and for ethical and scientific reasons, the most responsible scientists are strongly opposed to attempting it. Therapeutic cloning intends to only create cells.

Many countries and some US states already have legislation that permits therapeutic cloning while continuing to prohibit reproductive cloning. Most scientists support the prohibitions against reproductive cloning.

Answer 2

Stem cells are also called undifferentiated cells. This means that those cells have not "specialized" yet. They have not choose to become a nerve cell, a muscle cell or whatever cell.

There are 3 types of cloning, Recombinant DNA Technology or the DNA cloning, Therapeutic cloning or the stem cell cloning and Reproductive cloning or the human and animal cloning. So, I would say that you are talking about Therapeutic cloning.

Since stem cells are like the pre-evolved form of our cells now, we can use stem cells for research on diseases. Do note that cloning does not only mean giving rise to a human. We can also clone cells for other purposes.

Answer 3

You want me to explain stem cells and cloning and not get complicated? LOL!!!

Here goes anyway: stem cells are cells that have not been "differentiated" into specialized cells - they can turn into anything, and they are produced in the bone marrow. Embryonic stem cells are a special case of this. Not all stem cells are embryonic - there seems to be a great deal of confusion about this in the general public.

Cloning is different: this is where you take an egg, take the cell "nucleus" (DNA) from another cell and put it into the egg. This is also called "somatic (body) cell nuclear (as in the nucleus or DNA of a cell) transfer". They have been doing this for years with frogs, etc., but now they are attempting to do it with human beings. If I were to do it successfully with my own DNA, I could make a genetic copy of myself - same hair color, same height, same eye color, etc. It would still not be me, however, because its life experiences would be different - it would be more like a twin brother, but born many years later.

Answer 4

In a nut shell, Stem cells are cells in our body as well as any other mammal (to my knowledge) that has undifferentiated, or in another words, has not decided if it wants to be a heart cell or a liver cell.

So you see, the potential to manipulate such a cell, with no purpose (not really but basically that it does not preform the functions of any organized system of cells, i.e. liver, heart....) may supply the mean to injecting DNA from some organism, lets say you dog, and grow a dog in a donor stem cell. Also thier are many other techniques however i am not a stem cell guy completly so i will refrain from touching on an area that i am vaguly familiar with.

Answer 5

stem cells are cells that can become any cell in the body
You need stem cells the start the cloning process