What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloning?

Answer 1

Advantages include the ability to put genes into bacteria so that they can produce important molecules for us. An example of this is when we put the human insulin gene into bacteria so that we can produce human insulin for people with diabetes.

A second advantage is that we can put genes into things to make them stronger - like adding a pest repellent gene into corn prevents outbreaks of pests that eat the corn.

This advantage can also be a disadvantage,... if the gene ends up in all corn by cross-breeding, then the corn might not be suitable for human consumption.

If you are talking about whole organism cloning, then an advantage would be that if you had an animal or plant that was very rare (almost extinct) you could produce more.

A disadvantage to whole organism cloning is that we are not that good at it yet, and so they are often less fit than the original - shortened DNA.

Answer 2

Advantages Of Gene Cloning

Answer 3

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloning?

Answer 4

There are three main types of cloning:

1. molecular
2. cellular
3. organismal

Molecular cloning involves making copies of molecules of interest to researchers. Most commonly this involves duplicating portions of DNA (specifically genes), but it can also include other portions such as promoters, non-coding sequences and randomly fragmented DNA. An advantage of this is that many copies of genes and other segments of interest could be created and better studied than not copying them.

Cellular cloning involves deriving a clonal population of cells from a single cell. This is common in microbiology where researchers clone colonies of bacteria or yeast cells from a single original cell. Advantages include producing large amounts of the organism in a short time (if conditions are controlled and environment stable). One disadvantage is that they are genetically identical and the same environmental stresses may kill them.

Organismal cloning involves producing a whole organism genetically identical from the organismal source of the cells used for cloning. It is used in plant experiments where they get undifferentiated clumps of cells called calluses from certain parts of plants, culture it, and obtain whole plants genetically identical to that of the original plant. It could also be done with plant cuttings where the new plant would be genetically identical with the plant where the cutting was from. Animal cloning has already been done, where a milestone has been reached with Dolly, the first cloned sheep, since it was shown that a differentiated mammal cell (an udder cell, to be specific) programmed to express only a subset of genes, could be reprogrammed to generate an entire new organism. Human cloning, a type of animal cloning, may employ the same techniques as those that were done on Dolly (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer). This is especially controversial since there are ethical issues to be addressed with this. Therapeutic cloning involves culturing stem cells (undifferentiated cells that may give rise to any kind of cell in the body) and using them to harvest organs that could be used as replacements for diseased or damaged ones. This could be used as a way to cure debilitating human diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer. An advantage is that many organisms could be efficiently produced in a short time (although not true with animals yet). This is especially true for plants which take a long time to grow and produce seeds. A disadvantage, however, is that they are genetically identical and drastic changes in the environment or diseases may wipe them out since they may all be susceptible to these. Also, in the case of Dolly, it was shown that cloned organisms are not yet perfect and may even show signs of accelerated aging.

Answer 5

the advantage of clonning is it can clone a good quality of plant such as fruits. As the results, you can have all plant that each of them has the same properties as the good one. the disadvantage is when you use it to clonning human because everyone will protesting you. well that is my opinion.