Cloning

What is Cloning?

1. Who is Dolly? A sheep that has been valuable to cloning technology.

2. When a zygote divides into to separate cells, it is called: A two-celled embryo.

3. Somatic cells are also called: Germ cells.

4. In order to clone a gene, a gene is inserted into a: Plasmid.

5. In order to create an embryo from a somatic cell, the donor egg cell must have its __________nucleus_________ removed.



Click and Clone

6. List all the materials needed to clone a mouse.
CHemical to stimulate cell division, blunt and sharp pipette, petri dishes, microscope, a surrogate mother, and somatic cell donor.



7. Place the following steps in the correct order.

____4___Stimulate cell division
____6____Deliver baby
____2____ Remove and discard the nucleus from the egg cell
____1____ Isolate donor cells from egg donor and germ cell donor
____3____ Transfer the somatic cell nucleus into the egg cell
____5____ Implant embryo into a surrogate mother

8. There are two time gaps in the process of cloning. What are they? (ie. what do you have to wait for?)

8a. The DNA needs to reprogram itself.

8b. The cells need to divide, and it take several hours to do so.

9. What color with the cloned mouse be? ___Brown__________ What is the name of this mouse? ______MIni-Mimi________

Why Clone?

10. Why is cloning extinct animals problematic? Because extinct animals may be fiercer or more hostile than previously thought. Extinct animals might not be used to certain common bacteria on Earth that were introduced after the extinction.

11. What are some reasons a person might want to clone a human?
An infertile couple wanting a baby, or a couple with deceased children.

The Clone Zone

12. What animal was cloned in 1885? _____Sea Urchins__________________

13. How did Spemann separate the two cells of the embryo of a salamander in 1902? ___________He created a noose from a strand of his babies hair and tightened it around the embryo until it split____________

14. The process of removing a nucleus is called ______enucliation__________________

15. In 1952, the nucleus of a ___Frog_________ embryo cell was placed into a donor cell. Did it work to clone the animal? ___Yes_________

16. Can the nucleus of an adult cell be injected into an egg cell and produce a clone? _____Yes______

17. Why are mammals hard to clone? _____The DNA is very complex and they often develop differently depending on environment._________________________________________

18. What were the names of the first two cloned cows? _____________Fusion and Copy____________________

19. In what year was the National Bioethics Advisory Council formed? ____2009__________________

20. The first mammal clone to be produced from an adult (somatic) cell? _________________Sheep___________

21. What do scientists do to adult cells to make them "behave" like embryos? ____________Force them to divide._________________________

22. Transgenic, cloned sheep were used to produce what medical protein? _________Factor 9_____________________

23. What is a stem cell? _______A cell whose job in the body is not yet determined._________________________________________

Cloning Myths

24. Briefly describe in your own words, why CC the cat was not identical in color to Rainbow, even though she was a clone/
Rainbow, the surrogate mother had an inactivated X chromosome which gave many different colored patches for her cat. CC received a somatic cell that had an activated X chromosome that colored her fur black instead of orange.




25. What is "nature vs nurture"?
IT is the fact that genetics can be made exactly the same for the organism and clone, but the environment affects the physical appearance and behavior of an individual. Basically, the epigenome.





Is it Cloning or Not?

26. For each of the following scenarios, indicate YES (it is cloning) or NO (it is not cloning)

______No_____Sperm taken from a mole goat is combined with a female's egg in a petri dish. The resulting embryo is implanted into the female's uterus to develop
___Yes________A sheep embryo, composed of 16 cells, is removed from the mother's uterus and separated into indivudal cells. Each cell is allowed to multiply, creating 16 separate embryos, which are then implanted in different female sheep to develop to maturity.
____No_______A cow with many desirable traits is stimulated with hormones to produce a number of egg cells. Each of these eggs is fertilized and implanted into a surrogate mother.
______No_____ In vitro fertilization
______Yes_____ Cell nuclei from an extinct wolly mammoth are placed into enucleated cow cells.



27. Define or describe each of the following processes (you may need to reset the Cloning or Not Screen)

Invitro fertilization-The fusion of a father's sperm with a mother's egg to create an embryo identical to neither the father or mother.

Embryo splitting-THe process involves taking an embryo out of a cow. You then split the embryo and but the 2 halves in a petri dish with hormones that help with growth and another embryo is formed. These embryos are put into 2 different surrogate mothers and new babies are born.

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer-The nucleus of a somatic cell is taken out and placed into a germ cell missing a nucleus. The result is an embryo from the fusion of the somatic nucleus and the germ cell.

What Are the Risks of Cloning?

28. What is one reason why cloning animals has such a high failure rate?
An enucleated egg isn't compatible with the transferred nucleus.



29. What is a telomere and how does it affect cloned animals?
A telomere is a useless group of letters on DNA that is at the tip of each DNA strand so that when the cell divides, the important DNA is untouched. If a nucleus in a clone is already very old, the telomeres are short, and the clone will have a shorter lifespan because of it.







What Are Some Issues in Cloning?

30. Pick one of the questions to ponder and ....ponder it. Write a brief essay on your thoughts and opinions.

What are some reasons that would make people against my views?

I am against cloning because it is unethical and unfair. People might be against me because of money. Lots of financial gain will come from cloning for many different reasons. People who are infertile, had miscarriages and want kids will pay to have a child. If a pet or person that is very close to you was about to pass away, you could clone them so that you wouldn't have to lose them.

Harvest o' Fear

1. What is a GM Crop? A GM or genetically modified crop is a crop that in anyway is has been modified from the original product or process.



2. List 2 arguments FOR the growing of GM crops.

2a. GM crops can promise many health benefits. the have longer shelf life, and GM crops have less sugar and oil then traditional crops.

2b. GM crops can n help farmers financially. Pesticides often kill many plants each year, and GM crops are resistant to the pesticides.





3. List 2 arguments AGAINST the growing of GM crops.

3a. GM crops could harm the environment. MAny scientists think that the GM revolution is an uncontrolled experiment with unknown results.

3b. GM foods are not as rigorously tested because so much is being produced at a very fast rate. The FDA has called GM food substantially equivalent to regular foods, and are not subject to the FDA regulations.




Engineer a Crop

4. Practice this simulation until you get the largest ears of corn. How many times did it take you? 3.



What’s for Dinner?

*Click on the foods on the table to see what research is being done to bioenginner the foods.

5. List two foods and desribe how they are being modified.

5a. Coffee. BIotech companies are looking at engineering coffee beans for lower caffeine content, so that eventually they coffee can be grown decaffeinated instead of decaffeinating after the harvest.

5b. Fries. Bioengineers are also working to make high performance cooking oils for healthier fried foods with fewer saturated fats.


Viewpoints

*Read the article titled “Are GM Food Sufficiently Regulated in the US?”

Do you think food should be labeled if it has been genetically modified?
GM food shouldn't be modified because of public panic. Because of certain episodes in the US and around the world, many people are down right afraid of genetically modified food. I think if food was labeled, that business or manufacture would go out of business because of fear. It would be a huge hit to the food industry, and public opinion of this food would hit rock bottom.







Finished? Go to www.yahooligans.com and type "genetic engineering" in the search field. Browse some of the sites that pop up.

(Yahooligans is better than yahoo, the sites tend to be picked for education rather than for scientists and universities, you'll find more understandable and interesting sites on yahooligans than you will with Yahoo)

Write down any of the sites you visited below.