What's the difference between a twin and a clone?

Answer 1

natural vs. artificial selection!

Answer 2

Twins are two eggs attached together and break off to be born at almost the same times that have pretty identical traits, but are not totally same in behavior, etc.
A clone is a exact, I mean total perfect copy of another person made by copying the DNA from person and grown into a baby and then an adult to look exactly the same unless the clone was fed junk food to get fatter and every other variable. So twins and clones are not particularly the same.

Answer 3

There are two types of twins maternal and paternal.

Maternal- after the egg is fertilized the zygote splits and becomes identical twins.

Paternal- Two sperm fertilize two eggs. Not identical.

A clone is more similar to a Maternal (Identical Twin) because the DNA is very similar in both.

A clone- DNA is taken from a cell (usually a mammary cell) and inserted into an empty egg (an egg with removed DNA). The clone will look exactly like the animal that the DNA was removed from.

The main differences are:

The DNA in a clone is older and has a higher chance of cancer and other problems.

Clones are different ages. Twins are almost the same age.

Clones have different mitochondria DNA. This DNA comes from the mother's egg.

Answer 4

An identical twin happens when a fertilized egg (in the blastocyst stage) breaks in half. At such an early point in life, breaking in half is no big deal (it's just a few cells in all), and each half just regrows the other half. The result? Two units with the same full set of chromosomes.

A clone also starts with a fertilized egg, but that's where the similarities end. What you do in this case, in layman's terms, is to use the fertilized unit as a vehicle for a SEPARATE set of DNA. You suck out the DNA that came from the father and mother of the fertilized unit and insert the DNA of whatever you want to clone, then implant it in a surrogate mother's womb. The life cycle takes over from there.

Also, twins are the same age. A clone starts off as a baby, AND there are various complications. Most importantly, the template's DNA has already degraded a bit from all his years of living, and will start off from a degraded state after the clone is born. This is one reason (among many) that clones die young.

Answer 5

Identical twins start as a single fertilized egg. At some point during early development the dividing cells get seprated and develop into two seprate beings. So you get two people from virtually the same DNA.

Cloning takes the DNA from a developed indivual and attemps to make a copy. In theory this should produce the equivalent of an identical, albiet younger, twin.

The process is a bit tricker than it seems though, because while we have the same DNA from when we were concieved, it's not entirely in the same configuration.

Think of it in terms of software. An identical twin is like installing a program on two seprate computers using the same source disk. A clone is like copying a previously installed program from one computer to another and hoping the different method of instalation won't affect the program's operation.

Answer 6

Both identical twins and clones consist of the exact same genetic material. But a clone cannot be considered an identical twin of the donor because it does not share the same time in the womb. Twins experience the same environmental factors before birth (such as nutrition and exposure to stress, hormones, alcohol, and drugs), which play an enormous role in their physical and mental development. The clone, on the other hand, only shares genetic material with its donor and lacks the pre-natal environmental exposure of an identical twin.

Answer 7

Being a twin myself, and being a biology major, I have actually researched this question myself.
The main, and only difference, between a twin and a clone does not lie in the genetic structure. The above answers are right in their own respect, twins share a 100% the same DNA sequence, as do clones. However, when twins are born, and as they grow, their environment changes their personality, likes and dislikes, and their brains develop different neural pathways. These differences in neural pathways allow twins to function like completely different people, one will like black and the other will like white.
Clones, on the other hand, are identical to the very cell of their template of creation, brain neural pathways and all. This means that clones will have the EXACT same likes, dislikes, actions, reactions, etc.

Twins can function as two different people, in different ways.
Clones will function EXACTLY the same as their template (i.e the person they were cloned from)

Hope this makes it a little easier to understand.

Answer 8

a twin came from their mother's womb, sharing until they are born. they may share some characteristics but not all. clone is a copy of something and came from the DNA of an organism. A twin is a natural thing, whereas, a clone has some human manipulation.

Answer 9

In the case of a clone, deliberately created, there is a further difference that virtually guarantees individuality:

they live in a different time from their genetic twin. Anyone who is cloned is older than their clone; their life experiences cannot be identical without recourse to a time machine.

Answer 10

A clone is an exact copy of something. A twin is not as exact as a clone. One twin may have traits that the other twin don't.

Answer 11

A clone is an exact copy whereas a twin may be female or male or not share the same traits and or features of the test specimen.