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Cloning: Simple explanation through examples
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Besides technological, ethical and diversity issues, cloning still has numerous possible applications in our lives. Among them, medical applications are of course the most important and here are some of those:

Preclinical studies represent a necessary first step during the investigation of new medications. For the purposes of preclinical studies, laboratory animals are almost always used. Choosing the optimal experimental animals which contain properties we need for the research is not always an easy task, and cloning technology could provide a great help when it comes to this issue. Namely, we can choose one animal which has certain qualities we require, and then clone it many times thus getting a huge population of organisms with exactly the same genetic profile. That would make the results of our research more accurate and trustworthy.

Stem cells are pluripotent cells which are able to reproduce and differentiate into any human cell, and they can also be cloned for the purposes of research. In adults, the number of pluripotent stem cells is low, and they can only be extracted from certain areas of the body, so cloning those cells would enable more research in order to discover their abilities and behavior.

A very interested topic is also cloning the extinct species. In order to clone any organism, a preserved DNA molecule from at least one cell is needed. Tissue samples would probably be possible to acquire for some lately extinct species, but hardly for those which disappeared long time ago, such as dinosaurs. The more realistic and hopefully achievable option is the use of cloning techniques in order to protect some critically endangered species such as Amur Leopard (30 left), Sumatran Tiger (less than 400 left), and Mountain Gorilla (880 left). It is left to hope that cloning technology would be perfected soon enough to protect these organisms from extinction and help them repopulate.
Sasa Milosevic
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RE: Cloning: Simple explanation through examples - by sale0303 - 09-17-2013, 09:46 PM
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