Concept explainers
Scientists have cloned a number of animal species, including mice, dogs, cats, horses, and cows. Could the technology of cloning be used to bring back extinct species? In principle, yes, provided that perfectly preserved DNA of the extinct species is available. Such DNA could be transferred to an egg from a closely related, living species, and the egg implanted in a surrogate mother of that species.
For example, researchers have suggested that it might be possible to clone a woolly mammoth, using an elephant surrogate mother and DNA extracted from 20,000-year-old mammoths found frozen beneath the Siberian tundra.
Most scientists, however, believe that any DNA recovered from a fossil mammoth would be far too degraded for use in cloning, and synthesizing an entire mammoth genome (its sequence is now almost fully known) is beyond the capabilities of current technology. The odds of success might be greater for another proposed project, which would use DNA from a preserved museum specimen to revive the Tasmanian tiger, an Australian mammal that has been extinct for only 70 years. If cloning recently extinct species proves to be possible, do you think it would be a good idea?
If Extinct Species Can Be Revived by Cloning?
Want to see the full answer?
Check out a sample textbook solutionChapter 18 Solutions
Biology
- 5) Below is an image that shows both reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Use this image to answer compare and contrast therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Are they used for similar means…etc. Once you have done that answer the question below. a) There are two types of therapeutic cloning. What are they and how are they different?arrow_forwardDolly is the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell Which of the following statement/s is/are most relevant to the birth of Dolly? I. It suggests that human could be cloned. II. It proves that specialized cells could be used to create an exact copy of the animal they came from. III. It improves the production of milk, meat, and other products from livestock. IV. It proves that animals could be cloned to have gene mutations that help scientists study diseases that develop in the animals. A. II only B. I and II C. III, and IV D. II, III, and IV Which of the following statements best explain the significance of mitosis and ? A. Both mitosis and meiosis produce diploid cells which responsible for the continuity of life. B. Many single-celled organisms rely on mitosis and meiosis as their primary means of asexual reproduction C. replication, cells have another interesting choice, whether they want to make an identical copy, or do they want to make four half-copies…arrow_forwardThe following diagram outlines how the process of cloning a sheep was accomplished. Cloning is the process of creating a genetically identical copy of another individual. With Dolly, the first cloned mammal, an egg cell was removed from a donor (B) and the nucleus was removed from the egg cell. Then cells from a sheep's mammary gland were removed from a second donor (A). The nucleus of one of the cells from the mammary gland was fused with the enucleated egg cell using an electrical pulse. The fused cell underwent cell division and at the blastocyst stage was implanted into a surrogate mother sheep. The fused cell is cultured and is implanted as a multi-celled embryo. During the step where the fused cell begins dividing normally, the cells of the future clone undergo Select one: a. fertilization b. meiosis c. mitosis d. gene splicingarrow_forward
- Wooly Mammoths have been extinct for about 10,000 years; however, their remains have been well persevered in Siberia. Due to global warming, these remains are now available to be recovered. Scientists want to extract the DNA and through cloning insert the DNA into an elephant to clone the mammoth. What are some of the pros and cons of cloning an extinct animal?arrow_forwardYou just graduated from college and started working at a biotech startup called Scrofabulous. Your first job assignment is to clone the pig gene for the hormone prolactin. Assume that the pig gene for prolactin has not yet been isolated, sequenced, or mapped; What would be the most useful and economical first step to go about identifying and cloning the pig gene for prolactin? use the amino acid sequence of mouse prolactin to design a pair of degenerate oligonucleotide PCR primers to PCR-amplify the pig prolactin gene. RNAseq the pituitary gland of the pig, the most abundant gene is likely to to be prolactin Conduct a proteome search for peptides that match parts of mouse prolactin protein Sequence the pig genome, then translate the genome to find the gene predicted to encode for prolactin Crystalize the mouse prolactin protein and use Google's DeepMind Al to find the closest amino acid sequence in the pig proteomearrow_forwardNow that cloning is possible, should it be used to clone animals that are near extinction? What are the possible ramifications of this when it comes to genetic diversity and size of the gene pool?arrow_forward
- There are two time gaps in the process of cloning. What are they? (ie. What do you have to wait for?)arrow_forwardThere are a range of ethical issues associated with cloning. However, many of these are not applied to cloning plants. Explain why the idea of cloning an entire plant is generally accepted while cloning an entire human is not.arrow_forwardQ1) What is similar between molecular cloning and PCR?Q2) What is different from molecular cloning and PCR? Q3) What ‘horizontal gene transfer’ technique is utilized most often in cloning? (conjugation, transformation or transduction)arrow_forward
- What are some of the technical challenges of cloning a mammoth? Check all that are true Ancient mammoth DNA has degraded so it is hard to know the complete genome sequence Mammoth gestation time is likely too short to allowing cloning A living surrogate mother would have to be used, which could pose problems since the closest relative to mammoths is endangered elephants A living oocyte would have to be obtained from an extant species, which could pose problems since the closest relative to mammoths is endangered elephants Mammoths lived so long ago that they used a different genetic code than modern animals There are no enzymes in existence that could ligate together mammoth DNA sequence with elephant sequence Mammoths probably had egg shells, which would be hard to penetrate with a needlearrow_forwardScientists have reportedly isolated short fragments of DNA from fossilized dinosaur bones hundreds of millions of years old. The technique used to isolate this DNA is the polymerase chain reaction, which is capable of amplifying very small amounts of DNA a millionfold. Critics have claimed that the DNA isolated from dinosaur bones is not purely of ancient origin, but instead has been contaminated by DNA from present-day organisms such as bacteria, mold, or humans. What precautions, analyses, and control experiments could be carried out to ensure that DNA recovered from fossils is truly of ancient origin?arrow_forwardWhy is genetic imprinting is a major obstacle to the successful cloning of animals?arrow_forward
- Human Heredity: Principles and Issues (MindTap Co...BiologyISBN:9781305251052Author:Michael CummingsPublisher:Cengage Learning