Natural Sciences – FES 150
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 3 WHAT IS CLONING? 3 THERAPEUTIC CLONING 3 REPRODUCTIVE CLONING 5 RECOMBINANT CLONING 6 THE BIRTH OF DOLLY (SHEEP) 7 ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE WORLD 8 DOLLY’S FAMILY 9 WAS DOLLY ALREADY “OLD” AT BIRTH? 9 DOLLY’S ARTHRITIS 9 DOLLY’S FINAL ILLNESS 10 WHY WAS DOLLY IMPORTANT? 11 WHAT IS THE LONGTERM SIGNIFICANCE OF DOLLY? 11 DOLLY’S FACT SHEET 12 REFERENCES 13
INTRODUCTION
The possibility of human cloning, raised when Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute created the much-celebrated sheep "Dolly" (Nature 385, 810-13, 1997), aroused worldwide interest and concern because of its scientific implications. A Science magazine also generated uncertainty over the meaning of "cloning" --an umbrella term traditionally used by scientists to describe different processes for duplicating biological material.
WHAT IS CLONING?
Cloning is the production of one or more individual plants or animals (whole or in part) that are genetically identical to an original plant or animal.
There are two commonly discussed types of cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning cells from an adult for use in medicine and is an active area of research. Reproductive cloning would involve making cloned humans.
A third type of cloning called replacement/recombinant cloning is a theoretical possibility, and would be a combination of therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Replacement cloning would entail the replacement of an extensively damaged, failed, or failing body through cloning followed by whole or partial brain transplant.
THERAPEUTIC CLONING
All the information needed to create a new human being is contained in each cell of an existing human being. DNA testing on a human often starts by scraping some cells from the inside of a person's mouth. Living cells can be scraped off of a person's skin. No matter how
References: Campbell KH, McWhir J , Ritchie WA, Wilmut I (1996). Sheep cloned by nuclear transfer from a cultured cell line. Nature 380 (6569): 64–6. Nigel Williams (2003). Death of Dolly marks cloning milestone. Current Biology 13 (6): 209–210 Niemann H, Tian XC, King WA, Lee RS (February 2008) Shiels PG, Kind AJ, Campbell KH, et al (1999). Analysis of telomere length in Dolly, a sheep derived by nuclear transfer. Cloning 1 (2): 119–25. Shiels PG, Kind AJ, Campbell KH, et al (1999). Analysis of telomere lengths in cloned sheep. Nature 399 (6734): 316–7.