Cloning Essay, Research Paper

The first thing that must be cleared up is what is cloning, and what is a clone. A clone is an organism that has the same genetic information as another organism or organisms.

Currently, the agricultural industry demands nuclear transfer to produce better livestock. Cloning could massively improve the agricultural industry as the technique of nuclear transfer improves. Currently, change in the phenotype of livestock is accomplished by bombarding embryos of livestock with genes that produce livestock with preferred traits. However, this technique is not efficient as only 5 percent of the offspring express the traits. Scientists can easily genetically alter adult cells. Thus, cloning from an adult cell would make it easier to alter the genetic material. The goal of transgenic livestock is to produce livestock with ideal characteristics for the agricultural industry and to be able to manufacture biological products such as proteins for humans. Farmers are attempting to produce transgenic livestock already, but not efficiently, due to the minimal ability to alter embryos genetically, as stated above. Researchers can harvest and grow adult cells in large amounts compared to embryos. Scientists can then genetically alter these cells and find which ones did transform and then clone only those cells.

Scientists also ponder the idea of cloning endangered species to increase their population.