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Molecular Genetics: Animal Cloning 352 Views


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Description:

In this video from our course on molecular genetics, learn all about animal cloning.


Transcript

00:00

[ whoosh ]

00:01

We speak student!

00:03

[ whoosh ]

00:07

Molecular Genetics

00:08

Cloning Animals

00:10

A la Shmoop

00:12

We're talking biology with Dr. Ruth Tennen

00:15

and we're gonna talk now about biotechnology.

00:19

Okay, so, walk us through how scientists clone animals.

00:24

'Cause it just sounds so cool.

00:25

Yes, it does sound cool.

00:27

So, it's the Dolly idea, basically.

00:29

- We've all heard about the sheep. - The sheep.

00:30

Yep. And the basic process is called nuclear transplantation.

00:35

This is how most scientists would do it.

00:37

So you start off with an egg.

00:39

And you empty out the DNA from that egg.

00:41

So you end up with what's called an enucleated egg,

00:43

because there's no nucleus.

00:45

And then you take a differentiated cell,

00:47

which basically means, you know, it's a skin cell,

00:49

or a heart cell. It's become something; it's a mature cell.

00:51

You take the DNA from that differentiated cell,

00:53

and you insert it into that empty egg.

00:56

So, basically, you have turned that egg into,

00:58

essentially, a fertilized egg.

01:01

You basically take that egg,

01:02

you would allow it to develop into an embryo

01:04

in a petri dish, and then you'd put it into a surrogate mom -

01:06

so like a surrogate sheep mom -

01:08

allow it to develop,

01:09

and then you'd be born with basically a genetically identical

01:11

version of whatever organism you started with.

01:14

[ sheep baaing ]

01:16

So why can't we do that with humans?

01:20

So, there are definitely technical hurdles.

01:23

I think the bigger hurdles are, like, moral and ethical things.

01:26

It's possible people are working on that stuff,

01:27

but there are, like, major international laws

01:29

to prevent such things from happening right now.

01:32

And I think that there's also always issues with, like,

01:34

who's gonna have access to the technology.

01:36

And it's really only gonna be part of the population.

01:38

And then does that cause inequalities and things like that?

01:40

So there's a lot of ethical issues.

01:41

All right, so, back into the real world.

01:43

You know, obviously, there are good reasons

01:46

to clone animals.

01:48

And it's almost cloning and breeding.

01:50

- It's, I guess, a combined partnership. - Mm-hmm. Yep.

01:53

How does that work? Like, give us some examples

01:55

for what the state of the art is for cloning animals

01:58

and breeding and, kind of, creating them.

01:59

Yeah, so, there's a few reasons

02:01

that people are cloning animals now.

02:02

So, one is -- So, when we make animal models of disease -

02:05

so let's say we want a mouse model of some human disease -

02:08

it can take a long time to do that by breeding.

02:10

Because you have to introduce multiple mutations

02:12

and you have to cross all the mice and everything.

02:14

If you could -- If you had a mouse and you could just

02:16

make a new version of that same mouse

02:17

without having to do all that breeding,

02:18

that would be a huge time saver. So that's one thing.

02:20

Definitely, if you had, you know, some sort of

02:23

livestock that had a particular trait that you were interested in,

02:25

- it's easier, probably, to clone than to breed that. - Sure.

02:27

People are actually -- There's a big market for

02:30

bringing back extinct animals

02:33

- Yeah, Re-Animator. Yeah. - Or deceased pets, also.

02:36

- That was a great film. - Yep, so...

02:37

- But go back to the mice thing. - Yep.

02:41

What ethical issues arise when using animals for scientific experiments?

02:47

I think right now, we don't have a whole lot of other alternatives.

02:49

So it's either test this stuff on humans,

02:51

and test a drug on humans without testing it on animals.

02:53

Or you have to sacrifice some mice.

02:55

And there are tons of regulations about how the mice are treated.

02:58

You have to submit a protocol to make sure that

02:59

you're humanely treating the animals.

03:00

But there's like, you know, all the time there are people

03:03

picketing outside of research universities saying,

03:06

we shouldn't be doing these experiments on mice, so...

03:07

- Yeah. - Some are problematic still. Yep.

03:09

Hmm. Okay. Yeah, interesting ethical issues.

03:13

[ whoop ]

03:14

How do scientists clone animals?

03:18

Why don't we clone humans?

03:20

What are examples of cloning animals?

03:24

What ethical issues arise when using animals for scientific experiments?

03:33

[ eww ]

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