Scientists clone sheep - Essay Example

y that, but Dolly’s birth created a huge reaction all over the world as it led people to think of the possibility of human cloning (Rantala and Milgram 1). But still, Dolly’s birth remains a landmark achievement for both, the scientists who were responsible for it and for the world of science. Cloning can be defined as a “laboratory procedure in which the nucleus from the somatic(body) cell is transferred or transplanted into an egg cell from which the original nucleus has been removed” ( Saunders 131).

In the process of cloning, the organisms that are genetically identical to each other and to ‘parent’ are obtained using asexual reproduction (Dale and Schantz 25). Even though clones are genetically identical, they are not identical in actual appearance and behavior as it the external factors like environment that influences their behavior (Dale and Schantz 25). In case of Dolly, as her cytoplasm came from a Scottish Blackface ewe, she was not an identical twin to her cell donor mother (Campbell 58).

Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut headed the team at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh which produced Dolly (Kunich 7). Dolly, the cloned sheep was born on July 5, 1996 (Kunich 7). Previously, the mammals had been cloned using early embryonic cell, but Dolly was the first to be cloned from fully differentiated adult somatic cells (Kunich 7). The birth of Dolly proved wrong the 100 year old dogma that “once cells are committed to adulthood, they cannot again be totipotent” (Wilmut, Campbell and Tudge 209). 3. The embryonic development is started by jump-starting the activation of the cell division cycle of egg with the new nucleus (Baldi 51).

“ The developing embryo can then be implanted into foster mother