The first instance of cloning most of us heard about was
probably Dolly the sheep in 1997. However, cloning technologies have been
around since almost a century before that. The first animal to be cloned was a
sea urchin in 1885. And this was done by simply shanking apart the embryonic
cell to create two identical cloned cells which later developed into identical
sea urchin embryos.
In biology, cloning refers to creating identical copies of
individual creatures, while in biotechnology it refers to creating copies of
cells or DNA fragments.
The human body has natural healing abilities that can be
awoken by injecting an extracellular matrix (ECM) like pigs bladder at the site
of an injury or damaged tissue. This essentially has the potential to give us
X-Men like healing abilities.
The reasons for cloning featuring in this list of inventions
are myriad. Producing disease resistant plants, saving animals from extinction,
solving world hunger crises and therapeutic cloning for organ transplants are
just a few example of its potential scope.
Hundreds of animals have been cloned to date by method
called “nuclear transfer technology”. However, during the process many
unsuccessful attempts resulted in death of the animal due to infection.
Of course, cloning gives rise to many ethical and moral
dilemmas especially when we talk of cloning humans, so far it has been a topic
only dealt with by sci-fi movies but at the rate science and technology are
progressing the day doesn’t seem far when their will be clones walking amongst
us.
