Cloning of Animals

Cloning of Animals The cloning of animals is a process in which a single cell is taken from the parent organism and is used to reproduce a genetically identical organism. The animal cloned represents an exact duplicate of its parent in every way, the one exception of that is the original and cloning will not have the same DNA. The first cloning of an animal was of a sheep named Dolly. An instance of animal cloning is, development of twins from a single fertilized egg and asexual reproduction. The advancement and significant progress that biological technology has made, it is possible now to artificially recreate the process of animal cloning. A clone is a genetic copy of another living organism. There are two processes that can be performed when trying to clone an animal. One process is “embryo splitting”, this is very similar to what happens when twins are produced naturally. Embryo splitting involves bisecting the multicellular embryo at an early stage of development. This type of cloning occurs naturally, but is also performed in the laboratory with many animal species. The steps are… step one, embryo is split to form two half-embryos. Step two, embryos are transferred to an unrelated surrogate mother. Step three, pregnancy is monitored by ultrasound. Lastly, step four the animal gives birth to identical twins.
The second process of animal cloning is nuclear transfer. In the process of nuclear transfer, the nucleus of a somatic cell is removed and inserted into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed. Now that the egg has the donated nucleus it is then nurtured and divides until it becomes an embryo. Now the embryo can be placed inside a surrogate mother and develops inside the surrogate. There are two variations of this process; they are the Roslin Technique and the Honolulu Technique. The Roslin Technique is a variation of somatic nuclear transfer. Somatic cells are allowed to grow and decide and are then deprived of nutrients to induce the