ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

Molecular Genetics: Animal Cloning 352 Views


Share It!


Description:

In this video from our course on molecular genetics, learn all about animal cloning.


Transcript

00:00

[ whoosh ]

00:01

We speak student!

00:03

[ whoosh ]

00:07

Molecular Genetics

00:08

Cloning Animals

00:10

A la Shmoop

00:12

We're talking biology with Dr. Ruth Tennen

00:15

and we're gonna talk now about biotechnology.

00:19

Okay, so, walk us through how scientists clone animals.

00:24

'Cause it just sounds so cool.

00:25

Yes, it does sound cool.

00:27

So, it's the Dolly idea, basically.

00:29

- We've all heard about the sheep. - The sheep.

00:30

Yep. And the basic process is called nuclear transplantation.

00:35

This is how most scientists would do it.

00:37

So you start off with an egg.

00:39

And you empty out the DNA from that egg.

00:41

So you end up with what's called an enucleated egg,

00:43

because there's no nucleus.

00:45

And then you take a differentiated cell,

00:47

which basically means, you know, it's a skin cell,

00:49

or a heart cell. It's become something; it's a mature cell.

00:51

You take the DNA from that differentiated cell,

00:53

and you insert it into that empty egg.

00:56

So, basically, you have turned that egg into,

00:58

essentially, a fertilized egg.

01:01

You basically take that egg,

01:02

you would allow it to develop into an embryo

01:04

in a petri dish, and then you'd put it into a surrogate mom -

01:06

so like a surrogate sheep mom -

01:08

allow it to develop,

01:09

and then you'd be born with basically a genetically identical

01:11

version of whatever organism you started with.

01:14

[ sheep baaing ]

01:16

So why can't we do that with humans?

01:20

So, there are definitely technical hurdles.

01:23

I think the bigger hurdles are, like, moral and ethical things.

01:26

It's possible people are working on that stuff,

01:27

but there are, like, major international laws

01:29

to prevent such things from happening right now.

01:32

And I think that there's also always issues with, like,

01:34

who's gonna have access to the technology.

01:36

And it's really only gonna be part of the population.

01:38

And then does that cause inequalities and things like that?

01:40

So there's a lot of ethical issues.

01:41

All right, so, back into the real world.

01:43

You know, obviously, there are good reasons

01:46

to clone animals.

01:48

And it's almost cloning and breeding.

01:50

- It's, I guess, a combined partnership. - Mm-hmm. Yep.

01:53

How does that work? Like, give us some examples

01:55

for what the state of the art is for cloning animals

01:58

and breeding and, kind of, creating them.

01:59

Yeah, so, there's a few reasons

02:01

that people are cloning animals now.

02:02

So, one is -- So, when we make animal models of disease -

02:05

so let's say we want a mouse model of some human disease -

02:08

it can take a long time to do that by breeding.

02:10

Because you have to introduce multiple mutations

02:12

and you have to cross all the mice and everything.

02:14

If you could -- If you had a mouse and you could just

02:16

make a new version of that same mouse

02:17

without having to do all that breeding,

02:18

that would be a huge time saver. So that's one thing.

02:20

Definitely, if you had, you know, some sort of

02:23

livestock that had a particular trait that you were interested in,

02:25

- it's easier, probably, to clone than to breed that. - Sure.

02:27

People are actually -- There's a big market for

02:30

bringing back extinct animals

02:33

- Yeah, Re-Animator. Yeah. - Or deceased pets, also.

02:36

- That was a great film. - Yep, so...

02:37

- But go back to the mice thing. - Yep.

02:41

What ethical issues arise when using animals for scientific experiments?

02:47

I think right now, we don't have a whole lot of other alternatives.

02:49

So it's either test this stuff on humans,

02:51

and test a drug on humans without testing it on animals.

02:53

Or you have to sacrifice some mice.

02:55

And there are tons of regulations about how the mice are treated.

02:58

You have to submit a protocol to make sure that

02:59

you're humanely treating the animals.

03:00

But there's like, you know, all the time there are people

03:03

picketing outside of research universities saying,

03:06

we shouldn't be doing these experiments on mice, so...

03:07

- Yeah. - Some are problematic still. Yep.

03:09

Hmm. Okay. Yeah, interesting ethical issues.

03:13

[ whoop ]

03:14

How do scientists clone animals?

03:18

Why don't we clone humans?

03:20

What are examples of cloning animals?

03:24

What ethical issues arise when using animals for scientific experiments?

03:33

[ eww ]

Up Next

Marine Flashcard
32734 Views

In this video, we dive beneath the sea to review the kinds of interesting animals that live in the deep blue.

Related Videos

Phenotype
948 Views

Don't like how someone looks? Blame their phenotypes.

Phospholipids
7339 Views

Anything that has a cell (bacteria, listen up!) has phospholipids that keep the cell contained and give it form and shape. Phospholipids protect us...

What Would Mary Shelley Think of GMOs?
1343 Views

GMOs. Now that’s a scary word. Or is it? Guess it’s time to ask ourselves: WWMST? ...For those of us who don’t constantly ask ourselves “wh...

GED Science 1.2 Life Science
399 Views

GED Science 1.2 Life Science