Cloning

For the last few decades, cloning was a fictitious idea that lay deep within the pages of some sci-fi novels. The very idea that cloning could one day become reality was thought to be a scientific impossibility by many experts but on one exhilarating day, what was thought to be "purely fiction" became reality.

That fine day was February 22, 1997. A team from the Roslin Institute which was lead by Dr. Ian Wilmut changed the face of history forever by revealing what looked like an average sheep.

That sheep was what was going to be one of the most famous if not the most famous sheep in modern day.

Dolly was this seven month old Trojan lamb's name and Dolly was the first ever clone of a mammal. She was an exact biological carbon copy, a laboratory counterfeit of her mother. In essence, Dolly was her mother's biological twin.

What surprised most thought, was not just the fact that Dolly was a clone but was that the trick to Wilmut and his team's success was a trick that was so ingenious yet so simple that any skilled laboratory technician could master it.

Therein, lied a pathway towards a new future.

This news shocked the world for Dolly was the key to many new and prosperous possibilities.

But Dolly was not the first clone ever. Cloning of a more limited sort had been done before her. Creatures such as mice, frogs and salamanders had been cloned from as early as the 1950's. Then, a different procedure was used.

This procedure included the destruction of the nucleus inside the egg cell. Then a new "donor" cell would be brought and injected into the egg cell as a replacement.

The egg would then grow into an progeny of the same genetic make-up as the donor.

Later on in the 1970's a new technique was developed. This technique included transferring the genes from one organism to another by combining the DNA from a plant or animal cell with the DNA in bacteria. When the bacteria divided the cells were now the clones of both plant/animal DNA as well as the DNA it had originally.

This cloning technique allowed for the growth of many endocrine system treatments such as hormone, insulin and interferon.

In 1993, researchers in the US began and successfully cloned a human embryo in order to develop new ways to treat human infertility. This was accomplished using the DNA technique (the bacteria method) but stirred up enormous vehement outcries for the public considered this "pushing technology just too far".

Soon after in the mid 1990's, a team from the Roslin Institute (the creators of Dolly) discovered a new and more efficient method of cloning.

A method that was so simple, any in-veto lab could of done it fifty years ago; A method that was of great simplicity but it also allowed the lab technician to pick their desired healthy, mature sheep instead of the usual random lamb.

This resulted in a better sheep. The scientists did not have to take there chances with nature now.

This method of cloning was one of great similarity to the procedure created in the 50's.

An egg cell was taken from the udder of the Finn Dorset ewe and placed in low concentrate to allow