The word cloning comes from the Greek word Klon that it means bud or twig. So what the cloning is? The cloning is an artificial or a natural reproduction, and an asexual reproduction with which you can made million of identical copies of a fragment of DNA or of a whole living organism having as a result individual biologically identical. This reproduction it’s natural for unicellular organism and for plants. For animals and human beings in order to do it you have to do a nuclear transplant. There are three types of cloning, the first is the embryonic cloning, the second is the reproductive cloning and the third is the therapeutic cloning. The embryonic cloning makes twin individuals by the removal of cells from the fertilize embryo and make them to develop in a double embryo’s couple with identical DNA. The reproductive cloning use a technique names SCNT or somatic cell nuclear transfer in order to combine an enucleated egg with the nucleus of a somatic cell and make an embryo, this technique was done for the first time in 1920 by Hans Spemann and it needs two cells, one donor the other ovum cell. The process is the removal of a nucleus by the ovum cell, after in this cell there is the insertion of the nucleus of a somatic cell that comes by an adult donor, the next step is the growth in the laboratory in order to make an embryo, this process is call the blastocyst stage, there is the implantation of the blast in a surrogate mother and the birth of a clone of the donor. The therapeutic cloning has the same process as the reproductive one but after the blastocyst stage there is the extraction from the blast of the stem and embryonic cells , primitive cells that are able to transform themselves in any other type of cell in the body, and the plantation in vitro so that this stem cells are caused to make specialized cells. In the course of these years some animal have been cloned: Dolly, the sheep that has been cloned, the birth is on the 5 July 1996 in Scotland.
Mice that have been cloned in 1997 by the scientists of the University of Hawaii.
Pigs that have been cloned, the birth is on the 5 of March 2000 in Virginia.
CC or Copy Cat is the first pet that has been cloned by the Texas A&M University, the birth is on the 22 December 2001 in Texas.
Prometea, the horse that has been cloned by Italian scientists, the birth is on the 6 August 2003.
Snuppy, the first dog that has been cloned, the birth is on the 24 April 2005 in South Korea. He was an Afghan hound, was because he died for cancer on May 2015.
Injaz, dromedary that has been cloned, the birth is on the 8 April 2009 in Dubai.
Macaques Zhong Zongh and Hua Hua that have been cloned, the birth is in December 2018.
And what about the human cloning? In 1998 in December in South Korea was started a human cloning by some Korean scientists but the test was stopped for ethical morals when the embryo was at its first development but the probability of the success of the test wasn’t high.
This scientific opportunity is a good way or not?
*Marzia, II Liceo Scientifico
