Cloning occurs naturally in asexual species and is intentionally done in biotechnology. There are three types of cloning: reproductive, therapeutic, and DNA. Reproductive cloning involves creating an identical organism, therapeutic cloning is controversial as it involves cloning human embryos for stem cells, and DNA cloning is used for research.
Cloning is a term used in both traditional biology and biotechnology. In traditional biology, cloning occurs naturally in nature among many asexual species of plants, bacteria, and insects, where identical genetic copies of an organism are created as a form of procreation. In asexual cloning, the only differentiation that occurs occurs as a result of random mutations, as opposed to mixing different DNA. In biotechnology the term is used to refer to the intentional cloning of whole organisms, or part of the DNA or organism. It is the latter definition that most people mean when talking about different types of cloning.
There are three main types of cloning within biotechnology: reproductive cloning, therapeutic cloning, and DNA cloning. While it is reproductive cloning that has captured the imagination of most people and the media, due to the size of the organisms involved and the strong opposition to it, in reality the other types of cloning are far more common in today’s world.
Reproductive cloning is the cloning of an entire organism, or at least of that organism’s nuclear DNA. This allows a plant, animal or other organism to be essentially recreated from the same base material, although of course environmental factors can change the organism itself in the short or long term. Reproductive cloning is one of the most exciting types of cloning for most people, as it is what gave us animals like the famous Dolly the sheep, and it is what most excites people’s dreams and fears about cloning technology in general.
Reproductive cloning works by taking some genetic material from a source cell and transferring it into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. This makes the egg a kind of blank slate on which the transferred genetic material can be imprinted. This process is called somatic cell nuclear transfer and, although it is still far from perfect, great strides have been made in recent years, which have allowed it to be carried out with a relatively high success rate compared to even a few years ago. Reproductive cloning has met with fierce opposition from many groups, some of whom oppose it on religious grounds, some oppose it on the grounds of a lack of full understanding of the consequences, and some oppose it because they feel it is unnatural in a general sense. .
Another of the types of cloning, therapeutic cloning, is the type designed to provide us with a ready source of stem cells, which can be used in a wide range of therapeutic situations. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning human embryos, which can then be taken from their stem cells after about five days. Since the process of harvesting these cells destroys the embryo, this is one of the two types of cloning that has been more controversial, as some people consider it the destruction of a potential life and therefore unethical.
DNA cloning, or recombinant DNA cloning, is the least discussed of the types of cloning, where only a small fragment of DNA is cloned. DNA cloning occurs within something like a bacterial plasmid, which replicates itself. DNA cloning is an important part of research into things like the human genome, and because it doesn’t touch thorny issues like destroying an embryo or creating a higher life form, it has remained relatively problem-free in the wider world ever since. since its development in the 1970s.
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