While looking through the
news articles on the scientific feeds I came across one with a title of
“First
Primate Clones Produced Using the “Dolly” Method”. I was automatically intrigued.
With learning about genes and DNA in class I was interested in this news
article about clones. I learned about the Dolly Method in high school, so I knew
what this article was researching and what their out comes were. They are creating
animal clones with artificial DNA. In this article they used a technique called
somatic cell nuclear transfer. “Which involves the scientist swapping the nucleus
of a downer cell into a fertilized egg that has been purged of its own
chromosomes.” The egg then will create an exact copy of the donor’s genome and if
planted into a surrogate mother, the eventual offspring will be a clone. This
technique has been used on many animals, all have had successful cloning and
are just as healthy as the non-clone cousins. There are reasons for the cloning,
with primates they are the closet to human DNA. With the clones they can
produce substantial amounts of primates to start to test human diseases and
hopefully finding cures to them. But, there are many concerns that have stopped
the progress of clones. Even the same problems from a decade ago when Dolly was
first created. Which makes clones an object of debate and discussion in the scientist
world. Ethics, resources, facilities, are all things that are inhibiting the
growth of primate clone testing. The technology is there, it has been for
years. Most of the problems they face is the ethics part of the research. Which
I have torn feelings about. The U.S has stopped most of all their primate testing.
As the public does not like our close genetic relatives to be tested on. In some
places there are law set in place to stop these research techniques. The
another part that is limiting the growth of reserch is the resources. Some scientist
say that it would take to much time and money to make this effective. With expertise
in assisted reproductive technologies, reproductive physiology—and a large
cohort of donors which is not readily available currently. There are so many
things keeping this from moving forward. I think that a time will come that
this will become a necessary thing. As more diseases are showing up. Cancer
being seen more often in all ages. Brain disease starting younger. Birth
defects becoming more common, there are things humanity will need to start advancing
their research on and finding cures for. Primate cloning might be the answer to
allow scientist to get a larger outlook on finding options for cures for our
problems in larger scales. It is ready to be put in action, but I do not think
it will be happening anytime soon. Not until the people fighting the ethics
part of this will start to understand the need for it. And I hope that if there
comes a time that this is one of the last options to do this kind of extensive research
then I hope that it will move forward.
Aaron Ashby Until it was recently discovered, it was the belief that there was only one species of giraffes. Which is easy to understand because they are large unique mammals that look really similar to one another. Scientists from Senckenberg and a giraffe conservation foundation have recently put time into studying the genetic makeup of giraffes, and have made the discovery that there are four different species of giraffes instead of one. For the longest time giraffes were classified as one species with nine different subspecies that underlie the main classification of giraffe. These subspecies were based on different characteristics of the giraffe, that is their coat pattern, horn structure, and where they are geographically. The most recent estimates of the giraffes population have shown that their numbers have gone down tremendously by 35% over the past 30 years. It was thought to be that this extinction was slowly occurring because people were hunting them down for their
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ReplyDeleteI think that this topic is really interesting, but I'm not sure why it would be an answer to the questions you asked at the end of your post. Why would we need to clone primates to experiment on, is there a shortage of primates that are readily available now? It seems like it would be incredibly wasteful to clone a primate just to have one to experiment on when you could just breed some for less. IR
ReplyDeleteIn response to IR's question:
DeleteLike previously stated in the article, primate DNA is closest to human DNA. So, if scientists and researches could successfully clone primates then we could eventually clone human DNA as well so that when there is need for a transplant or other major surgical procedures, the cloning process could potentially save lives. For example, if a patient needs a heart transplant, then all it takes is an extraction of DNA from a healthy and compatible heart from another person and the cloning of that heart could take place and therefore replace the malfunctioning heart of the patient. Although, I do agree that the ethics behind this are debatable and perhaps there are other ways we could implement the cloning process.
-KK