The Science Sheep
Dolly
Meet Dolly! Dolly is a sheep and she is very special. Unlike ordinary sheep, Dolly is the world's first clone!
What is a clone?
Every person and animal in the world is unique! What makes us unique are little things inside of us called DNA.
You might know a pair of clones, they are also called twins. Twins are siblings made naturally that share the same DNA makeup.
Back to Dolly!
Dolly was born in 1997 as the first successful clone by scientists in Scotland (1). Since there were no other made clones, the scientists didn't know how healthy Dolly would be! Would she be sick? Would she be normal? All these questions and more were on everyone's minds! Luckily, Dolly lived a very normal and healthy life and even had babies of her own! She lived to be six years old and died in 2003 (2).
Now that you know all about cloning, let's talk about how Dolly was made. She was made using a method called reproductive cloning. Reproductive cloning is when you create a clone using only one parent (3).
How can you make a clone from only one parent?
This is made possible by something called SCNT, which stands for "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (4).
(5)Woah that seems confusing! To make it easier, imagine one adult sheep. They take two things from this sheep, a tissue cell and an egg cell. To understand this easier, imagine each cell as an egg!
The second step is to take the middle yellow part out of each egg(the nucleus). Then you put the yellow part of the tissue cell egg into the white part of the egg cell egg. This makes one egg with parts from each egg.
This newly formed egg is then put into the mother sheep and then after a little bit a baby clone comes out! This is how Dolly was created.
The Aftermath
This was a big leap for science but many people were very angry at this!
Why would they be so angry if this was good for science?
People had trouble knowing that Dolly was made by humans and not naturally like everything else. You, me, and everyone around us was made naturally. People see the creation as unnatural and wrong!
The other side
There are also many people who supported cloning Dolly. They saw it as good for science!
What do you think?
Now that you know all about Dolly and the cloning method they used to create her, you can form your own opinion! Your view on this is up to you to decide. Do you think it's wrong? Do you think it's right? You can decide which side you are on and even take steps to support your side! This dispute is still going on today and you can be part of it if you're really interested.
Citations:
(1)
Kalumuck,
K. E., & Kähler, K. N. (2013). First
animal clone and its implications. Salem Press Encyclopedia
(2)
Karcher, S. P., & Capriccioso, R. M. (2014). Cloning. Salem Press Encyclopedia of Health.
(4)
Stocum, D. (2014). Somatic cell
nuclear transfer (SCNT).
Encyclopædia Britannica
(5)
BioTechnology Online (2012). Scnt. Retrieved from http://www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au/popups/img_scnt.html
You did a really nice job on explaining each step and each definition and I think you made a challenging topic into something really simple and understandable for a younger age group. Having the egg example helped me and will probably help other students understand this concept. You used lots of pictures and colors which made the blog really interesting to read and your citations were correct.
ReplyDeleteI like how colorful it is, which kept me reading it. Some things to think about is the repetitiveness of using "Dolly the Sheep." I think it's ok to use it in the beginning but once you get to the part where you talk about how she's made, I think you can just use Dolly. Everything else looked good.
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