Cloning Dolly.: January 2009

Define the topic

Dolly was the first cloned mammal in history. She was cloned through the process of nuclear transfer. Nuclear transfer is when scientiests remove the nucleus from an oocyte (unfertilized egg,) then injects the nucleus, which contains the DNA that will be cloned. After this they inserted the cell into a surrogate mother so the cell could grow.

Brief Description

Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another. Every bit of DNA between the two organisms is the same. The picture beside shows how scientists made Dolly the clone.

History

-Dolly was born on July 5 1996 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Dolly was named after the famous singer Dolly Parton.
-In February 23 1997 it was announced that scientists have successfully cloned a sheep with Dr. Ian Wilmut giving direction. -2002 Dolly was said to have arthritis in her hind legs. Before they found out Dolly had arthritis she was able to have six healthy lambs through the process of natural mating.
-Dolly died on February 14 2003. She was put to rest after a veterinarian confirmed that Dolly had a progressive lung disease which is found commonly in sheep.

Applications/Uses

Dolly was a big scientific breakthrough. She opened many doors to cloning, and has lead to more cloning experiments.
Cloning may become useful in the study of the human body. They will be able to experiment on replicas of humans instead of animals that may have different affects.

Examples

Animals that have been cloned after Dolly are cows, mice, monkeys, fruit flies and pigs. Before Dolly Frogs were cloned by Dr.Gurdon. He used close to the same process of that formed Dolly, (nuclear transfer.) He was successful in cloning frogs except that they would never grow past tadpoles.

Ethical/Social Issues

A social issue of cloning is that people are afraid that humans will be the next species to be cloned. Canada has even considered passing a law that states that you are not allowed to clone humans. People may not like this idea because it goes against their beliefs.