Cloning
Tutorial. How is this really done?
A Genome Primer
What is this all about?
F irst, you have probably heard about chromosomes, DNA, and now the human genome. What are they, and how are they related? They are all the same thing at different levels, really. The genome is the total thing, the entire genetic information packet in a living being. The chromosome is the next division down. There are 23 pairs of chromosomes in each of the cells of human beings. Twenty three is a number we can picture in our mind, isn't it? Each of these chromosomes are really two strands of molecules wrapped around each other in the famous DNA "double helix" spiral. The strands of molecules, in turn, are made of only four different molecules arranged in a seemingly random order. These are the DNA molecules. If you think about a computer, you may have heard that the basic language of a computer consists only of two pieces of information, a "1" and a "0" if they were given names. And, yet those two numbers can become a pretty complex thing when repeated many times over. It's the same thing with our DNA. These four molecules (often abbreviated G, C, T and A for the names of the molecules) are the only "letters" the DNA uses to spell, but there are about 3.3 billion of them in the human genome. That enables people to be pretty complex creatures! The human genome project was working at finding out the order, or "sequencing" all of the DNA molecules on these strands. That's a lot of work. And the result was simply a very, very long string of Gs, Cs, Ts and As. Not really a very impressive sight, but amazingly valuable and important in the eyes of science.
| Cloning of adult animals |
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Cloning, generally, is done by taking an adult cell (the most viable seem to be "cumulus" cells from the area around the ovaries), and a egg cell whose nucleus has been taken out, and fusing them together. These are generally "grown" for a little while before they are implanted in a female animal.
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| Gene Chips |
Just as microprocessors have their microchips, biotechnology has it's own bio-chips. Unlike microchips, they are not the "brain" that runs the body. Instead, they're chips that somehow hold onto DNA strands so that they can be read easily. They are already playing a large part in the work of deciphering human genes. When the DNA is placed on the chip, certain parts will light up with a phosphorescent light, depending on whether that section is "turned on" or not. Using these chips, scientists can run experiments on DNA samples, seeing how they react to various things. That enables them to come to more of an understanding of the DNA itself.
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