Cloning: The Era of Laboratory Cloning

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Cloning: one small word with a big purpose. Cloning is the process that is used to create and produce genetically identical copies of an organism. Cloning has many promising applications in medicine, industry, conservation of life and basic research. Although cloning has proved to be technically challenging, when the process is successful, the effect is momentous. Moreover, genetic engineering, another word for cloning, is essential to research and creation of life. Cloning is a highly controversial subject and comes at a very high ethical price of messing with genetic life for the purpose of creating it, or destroying it.
The era of laboratory cloning began in 1958 when F.C Steward cloned carrot plants. But, plant asexual reproduction has been manipulated through grafting and steam cutting for more than two thousand years prior. The first life changing breakthrough in cloning history came to be nearly forty year later in 1996 when, Scottish scientists cloned the first mammal. Using cells from an adult sheep and an egg cell, Dolly the sheep was created. It was the first time in history that adult cells were used to clone a mammal, instead of using embryonic cells. Since then, scientists have been able to clone mice, cattle and goats by using similar methods.
Cloning begins by separating a specific length of DNA that contains the specific gene that you want to copy. The small particle of the gene is then placed into another DNA strand called the vector, which after time is transformed into a recombinant DNA molecule. That molecule is used to transport the gene into a host cell, like yeast, the DNA can replicate away from the nuclear DNA to produce clones. Cloning also occurs naturally in some plants and bacteria. Plants a...

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...the research just may be worth the success in the end. Advances in scientific research will tempt some for “the best” reasons, but setting aside others dignity for just a possibility of human life may not be worth the convictions of this method.

Works Cited

"Cloning Fact Sheet." Cloning Fact Sheet. National Institues of Health, 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 15 May 2014
"Human Cloning Laws." NCSL Home. West Group, Jan. 2008. Web. 15 May 2014.
Petechuk, David. "Clone and Cloning." The Gale Encyclopedia of Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. 3rd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 899-902. General OneFile. Web. 6 May 2014.
"Pros and Cons of Human Cloning - HealthRF." HealthRF. HRF, 6 Dec. 2013. Web. 15 May 2014.
(Smith, Wesley J. "The Arrival of Human Cloning; It's here. Don't get used to it." The Weekly Standard 27 May 2013. General OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

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