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Asked by to Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Lilly, Nick on 14 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Francesca Day answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Cloning is the process of creating one organism (like an animal or plant) that is genetically identical to another. This works by inserting the DNA of the animal into a surrogate mother, who carries the baby animal but is not genetically related to it. Then when the baby animal is born it is genetically identical to the original, but it is still younger of course!
One possible application of cloning is to help save endangered species, or even bring back extinct species!
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Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Some people are also working on creating clones (copies) of organs. This could also help us when we have an organ that is partly diseased, maybe by cancer. If part of it was ok we could try to clone a new healthy organ and then transplant it into our bodies, removing the diseased organ and making us healthy again.
The problem is that it is really difficult to do this in a lab, you need special cells called stem cells that will grow into your new organ. These are still difficult to get from people, but medical scientists are spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it.
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Nick Wright answered on 16 Mar 2014:
Cloning works by coping the DNA sequence of one animal into another animal that is still inside it’s mother uterus. When the baby animal is born it is clone of the animal from which the DNA was taken. Cloning it really useful for reproducing body parts for people with injuries or for whom certain parts of their bodies didn’t develop properly, so it has lots of medical uses.
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Lilian Hunt answered on 17 Mar 2014:
Everyone has pretty much nailed this question. It’s all about taking the DNA from a cell of one animal and putting it into the egg cell of another so that new mother animal can carry a baby that is the clone of a completely separate animal. We can do this with animals of the same species, so a sheep can’t give birth to the clone of a cat, only of another sheep. We do this in research sometimes because getting many copies of the same animal can be better to help us understand their genetics and some diseases.
Cloning to create stem cells is also important, especially in medicine as these stem cells can be grown in a lab into anything, even whole organs. If we use cloning to make these stem cells (like taking normal cells from a human and then changing them into stem cells and copying lots of them) we can make whole organs for transplants that are made from that person. That means the body hopefully won’t reject them for being from someone else.
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