Creative STEM


‘To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.’

- Albert Einstein

‘The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.’

- Max Plank

Changing the World by Cloning

Hi, My name is Kaavya Hegde, Currently in Grade 10. I have a great interest in Climate Change, Cancer Biology, Behavioral Economics, and Endangered Species Recovery. I am not only interested in this but also interested in making a difference clone by clone. Some of my hobbies are hiking, exploring the rich biodiversity around us, biking to explore new trails, and creating unique pieces of art. My future goal is to find a cure for cancer, the most dangerous disease. I want to prevent the disease through the works of molecular geneticists.

Human cloning, though controversial, could potentially improve our lives medically. There are many advantages to human cloning. Our future is going to have more genetically modified humans than sexually produced humans because nowadays, many of us are worried about life-threatening diseases. Through what we have researched in school, we know that reproduction is a painful and complicated process that has many hardships and obstacles in the way.

In 1958, Fredrick Stewart became a pioneer in the scientific world when he created a plant from a single carrot cell. Today, this technique is commonly referred to as cloning. Cloned plants are identical to their parents. It allows for the production of strains of genes with predictable characteristics. Plant tissue culture and cloning techniques have laid the groundwork for genetic engineering. Many questions are still yet to be answered, for example, Carrots, ferns, tobacco, petunias and lettuce respond well to cloning but grass and legume families do not. Why this happens is still a question that scientists working hard to answer. Each regenerated cell contains the complete complement of chromosomes and genes from the parent. Yet some cells specialize and become roots, stems or leaves. The cells within the leaf use only certain parts of the DNA, while the cells of the root use other segments of DNA. Huge sections of the genetic information remain dormant in specialized plant cells.

While plant cloning experiments were being conducted, Robert Briggs and Thomas King were investigating nuclear transplants in frogs. The cell with the transplanted nucleus began to divide like any normal fertilized egg cell. “A nucleus that can bring a cell from egg to adult is referred to as totipotent but not all nuclei are totipotent.” For example, the nuclei from a later stage, the gastrula stage, did not bring the enucleated cell from egg to adult. The difference is that the gastrula nuclei have already specialized.

The first reason why human cloning can potentially improve our lives and the future generation is that, it is an innovation that can change the world in a positive way. Not only plants and animals can be revived but humans can also be revived with cloning to offer potential benefits to other people who are living. Moreover, We could reduce the pain they go through nowadays by making infertile couples experience happiness, without going through the pain of reproduction. This is also connected with the process of genetics. You can genetically modify another, younger or older version of a dad or a mother to create a child.

Adult mammalian cells tend to be highly specialized, meaning that transferring nuclei from the highly specialized cells of an adult animal into an enucleated cell will not stimulate cell division. The genes controlling cell division have been switched off. The fertilized egg divides again and again to attain the structure of an adult but in dividing the cells aggregate and specialize in different tissues and organs. It would appear that the cells must be taken before the eight-cell stage of development to ensure that their nuclei are totipotent. After the eight-cell stage, the cells specialize and their ability to stimulate cell division is gone. The long-held scientific belief is that adult cells can’t be used to clone animals was disproved by a sheep named Dolly, famous in the world of science for cloning. Dr. Ian Wilmut, of the Rosalind institute in Scotland, extracted the nucleus of an udder cell of an adult Finn Dorset sheep and placed the nucleus into the enucleated egg cell of a Poll Dorset sheep.


The second reason is that it aids faster recovery from traumatic injuries. For people who became a quadriplegic due to horrific traffic accidents and professional athletes who tore their ACLs, their recovery time could be long or even impossible for them to get back to their original state. The process of transplanting human organs can become simpler, with an immensely improved success rate.


My third reason is that it can raise hopes for new treatment. Current efforts at human cloning are focused on creating embryonic stem cells for research and medicine, as described above. Still, lots of people feel that this type of healing comes very close to human reproductive cloning. And once methods become more modernized and effective, scientists fear that some may be tempted to take that next step. Also, animals from the farm such as cows, sheep, and goats are being genetically directed to produce drugs or proteins. This can help and be useful in medicine. For research, scientists take cells from a cow that produces large amounts of milk and grow them with practice.


Now we know that human cloning is beneficial to us in some way or the other. Cloning has always inspired many generations of scientists. Even with all those discouragements by all of the negative thoughts about human cloning to inspired scientists, they always have something positive and innovative about cloning. I agree with all the inspired scientists that cloning could potentially improve our lives medically.


Bibliography:

https://dokumen.pub/nelson-biology-11-1nbsped-0176121005-9780176121006.html