*Process of creating two or more identical plants via a process typically known as cloning. *Is relatively simple. *Requires a rooting hormone, a shade to keep them from being overexposed to the light early in it's development, and a container to move the plant.
2) Analyze it:
*Is typically much easier than animal cloning.
*Take part of a fully healthy, young plant (from a leaf or a root perhaps) and take the dissociated cells and grow them into separate, yet identical plants. This process is known as vegetative propagation with leafs, and tissue culture propagation with roots. The cells form a callus around them, which is a mass of unspecified cells.
*The callus can eventually grow and take on the functions necessary to make another almost identical plant.
*While these plants have the same genome to begin with, mutations happen at a surprising rate to insure that these plants are not the exact same as the parents. Scientists are currently trying to determine if this is actually some sort of intentional mechanism within the plants to insure genetic diversity, or if it is all coincidence.
3) Apply it:
*This takes the guesswork out of gardening: the offspring will be the same as the parents. This means you can choose your best plants and then clone them, ensuring that good qualities.
4) Synthesize:
* This reminds me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", where plants replace normal people with identical clones that serve to help the plant take over the world. Its not the absolute best metaphor, but it's definitely memorable.
5) Argue for or Against it:
*This type of cloning is actually quite natural. The plant's uncanny ability to regenerate works in a way that can propagate new versions of itself. *As this type of cloning is very natural, the only real complaint one could bring up would be the significant drop of genetic diversity resulting from growing a field from only a selection of cloned plants, possibly resulting in an increased susceptibility to disease.
Animal Cloning:
1) Describe it:
*It is the process of building/ recreating an identical animal from the DNA of another animal. It is typically more difficult than plant cloning.
2) Analyze it:
*Animals can also be cloned naturally, as some animals can also be cloned, by taking unfertilized eggs from an animal and growing it into a full animal. This is called parthenogenesis.
*Alternatively, genetic information can also be transplanted straight into an unfertilized egg that's genetic information has previously been destroyed. The future zygote is then shocked to start mitosis.
*Neither of these are exactly easy to replicate in a classroom, while the first one may occur naturally.
*Some cloned animals have developmental problems, such as being abnormally large. Scientists believe this is the result of issues with imprinting, in which the gene on a chromosome from one parent is told to turn on or off the gene of the other. The cloned animals genome may have both chromosome's genes turned 'on' or 'off', resulting in developmental problems.
*Also if a cloned organism have unusually short or long telomeres. Scientists aren't quite clear as to why this is.
3) Apply it:
* This is where this gets exciting. Cloning and Bioengineering in general are both rapidly expanding fields, in a way that on top of the already numerous ways this knowledge is being utilized there are bound to be ways that we don't even know about yet. But here are some uses that we can use now. *Significant increase in availability of organs for transplant (from cloning)
4) Synthesize:
*This reminds me of Dolly the sheep, which helped prove to the public that cloning was possible.
5) Argue for or Against it:
Pros
Animal cloning could provide multitudes of the same test subject for animal testing, testing to see if the drug consistently works the same on the same animal.
Could allow for easy and readily available organs for transplantation by using embryos made from the DNA of a sick person and using the stem cells from the embryos to make organs from these stem cells.
Cons
*Cloning is still expensive and only occasionally successful. In fact, out of 1000 attempted clones, on average more than 950 fail.
*Possible safety issues, cloned animals haven't been tested as a food source.
*Ethical issues
Plant cloning:
1) Describe it:
*Process of creating two or more identical plants via a process typically known as cloning.
*Is relatively simple.
*Requires a rooting hormone, a shade to keep them from being overexposed to the light early in it's development, and a container to move the plant.
2) Analyze it:
*Is typically much easier than animal cloning.
*Take part of a fully healthy, young plant (from a leaf or a root perhaps) and take the dissociated cells and grow them into separate, yet identical plants. This process is known as vegetative propagation with leafs, and tissue culture propagation with roots. The cells form a callus around them, which is a mass of unspecified cells.
*The callus can eventually grow and take on the functions necessary to make another almost identical plant.
*While these plants have the same genome to begin with, mutations happen at a surprising rate to insure that these plants are not the exact same as the parents. Scientists are currently trying to determine if this is actually some sort of intentional mechanism within the plants to insure genetic diversity, or if it is all coincidence.
3) Apply it:
*This takes the guesswork out of gardening: the offspring will be the same as the parents. This means you can choose your best plants and then clone them, ensuring that good qualities.
4) Synthesize:
* This reminds me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", where plants replace normal people with identical clones that serve to help the plant take over the world. Its not the absolute best metaphor, but it's definitely memorable.
5) Argue for or Against it:
*This type of cloning is actually quite natural. The plant's uncanny ability to regenerate works in a way that can propagate new versions of itself.
*As this type of cloning is very natural, the only real complaint one could bring up would be the significant drop of genetic diversity resulting from growing a field from only a selection of cloned plants, possibly resulting in an increased susceptibility to disease.
Animal Cloning:
1) Describe it:
*It is the process of building/ recreating an identical animal from the DNA of another animal. It is typically more difficult than plant cloning.
2) Analyze it:
*Animals can also be cloned naturally, as some animals can also be cloned, by taking unfertilized eggs from an animal and growing it into a full animal. This is called parthenogenesis.
*Alternatively, genetic information can also be transplanted straight into an unfertilized egg that's genetic information has previously been destroyed. The future zygote is then shocked to start mitosis.
*Neither of these are exactly easy to replicate in a classroom, while the first one may occur naturally.
*Some cloned animals have developmental problems, such as being abnormally large. Scientists believe this is the result of issues with imprinting, in which the gene on a chromosome from one parent is told to turn on or off the gene of the other. The cloned animals genome may have both chromosome's genes turned 'on' or 'off', resulting in developmental problems.
*Also if a cloned organism have unusually short or long telomeres. Scientists aren't quite clear as to why this is.
3) Apply it:
* This is where this gets exciting. Cloning and Bioengineering in general are both rapidly expanding fields, in a way that on top of the already numerous ways this knowledge is being utilized there are bound to be ways that we don't even know about yet. But here are some uses that we can use now.
*Significant increase in availability of organs for transplant (from cloning)
4) Synthesize:
*This reminds me of Dolly the sheep, which helped prove to the public that cloning was possible.
5) Argue for or Against it:
Pros
Cons
*Cloning is still expensive and only occasionally successful. In fact, out of 1000 attempted clones, on average more than 950 fail.
*Possible safety issues, cloned animals haven't been tested as a food source.
*Ethical issues