Advantages Of Animal Cloning

Cloning Essay (Animals)

Introduction: Animal cloning first began around the 1900s when two German scientists successfully split a “2-cell newt embryo into two parts, successfully producing two larvae”. Over the years biotechnology has made its way into the public, and now scientists are able to clone certain animals for favourable characteristics. In this essay I will discuss 1 of the methods for animal cloning (SCNT), its implications and discussing advantages and disadvantages of animal cloning.

Definition: Animal cloning is the process whereby genetically identical individuals are produced in similar populations.

Technique (How It Is Used) (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer): There are various techniques involved in animal cloning, however

A disadvantage of animal cloning is that there is a high chance of mutations occurring as in animal cloning somatic cells play an important role and when these cells contain mutations, the animal that has been cloned may be weak or could have lethal effects throughout its body later on. Another disadvantage of animal cloning is that death can occur when the donor eggs mitochondria doesn’t exactly match with the body cells (somatic) mitochondria. Furthermore, another disadvantage of animal cloning is that it is extremely expensive. This is because a large number of eggs are required for a single living clone, and this may not be worthwhile pursuing as it much easier to reproduce animals normally. Another disadvantage of animal cloning is the high failure rates. Currently, somatic cell nuclear transfer technique only has an approximate success rate of 0.1 percent-2. What this means is that out of 1000 cloning attempts, between 1-20 cloned would be successfully produced. Nevertheless there are advantages in animal cloning. Firstly, animal cloning can be used to preserve endangered species. Currently, thousands of animal species across the world are in danger of becoming extinct. However, with animal cloning, this would provide a tiny bit of hope for these certain animals surviving as the population could be highly increased in a short space of time, therefore the extinction rate would decrease and the population will increase for that specific species. However, this could very well be an advantage, but reintroducing extinct animals back to earth could lead up to one huge problem. The genes for these extinct animals are blind to us and scientists, therefore if we do reintroduce extinct animals then we could also bring back ancient viruses or bacteria that roamed the earth thousands of years