How Cloning Really Works
Pop culture would lead us to believe that cloning someone would be an instant process with a perfect replica. But that isn't exactly how it works.
So if you don't know, cloning is, in fact, possible, it's just not done the way you think.
Enter Dolly. She is a sheep, famous for being the first ever successfully cloned mammal.
Dolly was created by taking a cell from the mammary gland of a white sheep, extracting the nucleus, and putting that inside the egg cell of a blackfaced sheep.
The egg cell was then put back into the blackface sheep and on July 5th, 1996 Dolly was born.
They knew that the cloning was successful because Dolly was all white. If she had the DNA of her surrogate mother, she would have had a black face.
But despite being a success over 20 years ago, we still can't instantly recreate a person exactly.
They still have to grow up to an adult stage, and they wouldn't have the same memories as the original person.
So, then what's the point of cloning then you might ask. To that, I say "Pyrenean Ibex."
The Pyrenean ibex is a subspecies of Spanish ibex that went extinct in 2000. But we brought it back in 2003. For a few minutes at least.
This is important because it was the first time we had revived an extinct species through cloning. Or at all.
The scientist who ran the experiment had used skin cells from the most recently dead Pyrenean ibex for the nucleus. And normal domestic goats for mothers.
They made 208 embryos and only 7 of the goats became pregnant, and the only one gave birth. Sadly, the ibex died minutes after birth due to respiratory failure, though all other organs looked fine.
Now don't jump to thinking we can make baby mammoths just yet. Though it is being considered, there are a few problems to work out.
First, we would need a full mammoth genome. Not just bits, a full one. Then we would need to find a suitable mother, which the closest thing would be an Indian Elephant. Then it would take a lot of waiting, as elephants can take up to almost 2 years to give birth. Even if all that went well, we would only have one mammoth. Or more, but all with the same DNA, which isn't a good thing if you want to rebuild an entire population. Not to mention that the planet isn't the same as it was when they existed.
And dinosaurs aren't even worth considering. Though we might be able to make a chickenosaurus.
So, no perfect identical clones, and no wooly mammoths, and noooo dinosaurs. But we did have an extinct goat.
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Further Reading:
Dolly The Sheep: http://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/th...
Pyrenean ibex:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ne...