Cloning: The Specifics
Now that you have gotten a brief idea of cloning, lets get down to the specifics. There are 3 types of cloning,
DNA cloning, embryo cloning and reproductive cloning.
Firstly, DNA cloning. Scientists extract a certain strand of DNA and injects it into a bacteria or virus and the DNA is reproduced many times. This allows the production of many medication, like insulin for diabetes.
Secondly, embryo cloning is used to produce stem cells for research. You may ask what exactly are stem cells? Well, they are building blocks for the body. They can amazingly develop into any cell, tissue or organ in the body!
Lastly, reproductive cloning has 5 steps.
1) Get an egg. (Not the ones chickens lay, but the egg,or ooceyte, produced by a female)
2) Carefully extract egg's nucleus with the help of a microscope and fine needle. Hence, no genetic material is present.
3) Insert the DNA that you want to copy into the now empty egg.
4) Hence, the egg is ready and carefully taken care of to start cell division.
5) When this happens, the cell is implanted into the organism you want to use. There, it will develop to its full term.
This may sound easy, but there were many failed attempts at cloning animals other than frogs until Dolly the Sheep...
Until next week!
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Acknowledgements: Dolly: The 1st Cloned Sheep, Written by Joeming Dunn, Published by magic wagon
