A clone is a genetic copy of another living organism.
Unlike natural sexual reproduction where half the genetic material comes from the female and half from the male, all the genetic material of a clone comes from a single “parent.”
Many people don’t realize that genetic manipulation technology, similar to cloning, has been used in animal production for years.
Embryo splitting is the making of identical twins in a laboratory.
The process begins by creating an embryo from the fusion of a sperm cell with an egg cell. The cells can be split when the embryo divides into two cells, and then four or eight. Each clump of cells is capable of growing into a full adult animal. These identical embryos are implanted into surrogate mothers, where they grow to full term.
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Creating an animal from a single cell derived from an adult’s body, where the cells are fully differentiated, is much more difficult because a cell from the skin, heart or kidney only grows into that specific tissue. This problem was overcome when scientists started using nuclear transfer, or NT.
Dolly the sheep, the first animal cloned from another adult animal, was created in this way.
In NT, a cell’s nucleus, which contains DNA, is removed from a donor cell and introduced into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed. An electrical pulse is used to fuse them together and activate development.
After a few days, the embryo is implanted into a foster mother. The genetic makeup of the NT embryo is identical to that of the adult donor.
Why would a producer want to clone his livestock?
The answer is that it would allow animals with desirable traits to be duplicated. Cloning could allow the replication of a dairy cow that produces milk with unusually high protein content for cheese manufacture or low saturated fat for human health benefits. A sheep with extremely good wool could be copied.
More traditional breeding programs, such as selective breeding, do not always produce offspring with all of their parents’ desired traits.
Is meat and milk from cloned animals safe to consume? Should it be allowed into the food chain? Health Canada is studying these questions before it allows these products to be sold.
Some people claim that a clone is just a copy of the original animal, so there is really no genetic manipulation the way there is with genetically modified crops.
A decision has to be made in the next few years, but it promises to be a hot debate. So far, no cloned products have been sold in Canada.
Canada’s first cloned bull, Starbuck Two, born over two years ago, is stuck in regulatory limbo. This Holstein bull has had its semen collected and stored, but the company that owns the animal has not been able to sell it.
NT technology has also been used to clone a cat at the Texas A&M University. To date, canine cloning has been unsuccessful. Genetic Savings and Clone funded the work, marking a new era for pet owners.
Until this cloning technology is perfected, pet owners can take skin samples from their pets, dead or alive, and put them into frozen storage. In the future, the nucleus from a single cell can become a pet’s clone.
The clones will of course have the same genetic makeup as the “source” animal, but experience has shown that it may not act or look identical. The shy calico cat at Texas A&M produced a clone that was a curious and playful gray tabby with white markings.
Even though cloning is not yet perfected, the technology is
certainly here. But what should be done with it? Should it be allowed? Who decides?
Jeff Grognet is a veterinarian and writer practising in Qualicum Beach, B.C.
