Cloning Notes

Notes adapted from www.genome.gov for middle school or high school students. Life Science, biology, genetic engineering, cloning. Describes how Dolly the Sheep was cloned.

1. CLONING Notes Adapted from www.genome.gov https:// www.genome.gov /25020028/cloning-fact-sheet/#al-1

2. What is cloning? Cloning is a process that produces genetically identical genes, cells, tissues and organisms.

3. Naturally Occurring C lones Some plants and bacteria produce clones through asexual reproduction. Natural human clones are known as identical twins. The twins are produced when an embryo splits, creating two or more embryos that have almost identical DNA.

4. 3 Types of Artificial Cloning 1. Gene cloning – produces copies of genes or segments of DNA. 2. Reproductive cloning produces copies of whole animals (human cloning is illegal). 3. Therapeutic cloning produces stem cells for experiments aimed at creating new tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues.

5. Artificial Embryo Twinning Embryo is purposefully split in half. Two identical embryos grow in the mother. Identical twins are born.

6. Animal Cloning Scientists remove a cell (like a skin cell) from the animal they want to copy. They remove the nucleus of an egg cell from the surrogate mother ( the female who will grow and birth the clone). They put the DNA from the skin cell into the egg cell of the surrogate mother. A few months later, the clone is born (as a baby).

7. Dolly the Sheep DNA from sheep X is removed from sheep X’s udder cell. The nucleus from Sheep Y’s egg cell is removed. Sheep X’s DNA is placed into sheep Y’s egg cell. Scientist shock the egg cell to trick it into thinking it’s a normal cell. The egg cell starts acting like a normal cell and dividing like an embryo. Sheep Y gives birth to Dolly the clone – who has Sheep X’s DNA .

8. Dolly (whiteboard sketch on website)