Background Information About Cloning.

Who invented cloning ? What is the Roslin Institute ? Is it full of Scottish Dr. Frankensteins ? Cloning of mammals was first achieved by Ian Wilmut, a research scientist working at The Roslin Institute, which is a leading international center for research on farm animals. Its research on quantitative genetics, genome analysis, animal physiology and behavior is aimed at improving the productivity and welfare of farm animals. No, the institute is not full of mad scientists: the people who work there are well-respected, level-headed researchers. The Roslin Institute can be reached at:

Roslin Institute, Roslin, Midlothian, EH25 9PS, Phone: +44 (0)131 527 4200 Institute Director: Professor G. Bulfield (E-mail: grahame.bulfield@bbsrc.ac.uk) Phone: +44 (0)131 527 4457

Expertise in the techniques of cloning has now spread all over the world, and scientists from Australia to Japan to America and beyond have all successfully cloned mammals.

What is a clone? Nature creates clones all the time. Identical twins are clones of each other, as they have identical DNA, because they start as a single cell - a fertilized egg - which then divides into two.

What's the difference between cloning from an embryo cell and from an adult cell? Embryo cells are called "totipotent" - that is, each one has the potential to become an embryo in its own right. But at some stage during its growth, while still in the womb, the cells lose that ability because some genetic switches are flipped off or on. They become any one of the multitude of specialized body cells, and won't revert. That's convenient - it means when you cut yourself, you don't get a baby growing over the cut, you get skin.

How do you make an adult cell totipotent again? That's what Ian Wilmut and the researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland seem to have worked out. It consists of "starving" the isolated cell, so that it goes into a resting state where it stops trying to grow and make proteins from its DNA. This state is known as "G0". Then you take the DNA from the nucleus and implant it in an egg.

Basics of Developmental Biology A cell from your liver (or any part of any adult) should always remain a liver-cell because it has "differentiated." Differentiation is the natural process whereby cells specialize into a certain kind of cell. As a frog embryo grows and develops, its cells differentiate into nerve cells, blood cells, fat cells and many other different kinds of cells. That's what differentiation is all about. Differentiation is important because without it an animal could never be anything but a blob of unspecialized cells. As a mass of embryo cells divide and differentiate they "create" the animal. This incredible process of differentiation turns zygotes into animals and it's all controlled by the genes.

An oocyte is an unfertilized egg and it has no chance of developing into an animal unless it's fertilized. A recently fertilized egg is called a zygote.

A scientist named Gurdon first proved cloning was possible when he transferred the nucleus of a cell from an adult frog into an enucleated oocyte. That's nuclear transfer, the transfer of a nucleus from one cell to another, creating a "new cell" with a different nucleus. Many of these new cells which Gurdon created behaved like zygotes. They divided and divided and divided just like a normal developing embryo, producing a ball of cells. And this ball of cells differentiated! Nerve cells, skin cells, blood cells appeared just as they would in a normal embryo. After the normal length of time Gurdon had tadpoles! Because the tadpoles had all come from the cells of the same adult, they all had the same genetic material. So they were all clones, identical twins of each other. But unlike normal identical twins they were made from differentiated cells. Gurdon had proven something that many scientists had argued about. He proved that differentiation was reversible. Gurdon's method of nuclear transfer turned back the hands of time, in a developmental sense. Gurdon's method of nuclear transfer made clones from adult cells!

Ian Wilmut and his team took Gurdon's concept and applied it to large mammals. Through a long trial-and-error process, they succeeded in doing the same process with sheep cells, thereby producing a new sheep that was genetically identical to its "mother," i.e. the sheep from which the original donor cell was taken.

Everyone immediately realized that Wilmut's successful technique could also be applied to human beings. He proved once and for all that all we need is a single cell from any adult human - living or dead - and we can create a complete clone of that person.

Ian Wilmut once said, in relation to cloning, "We would share the concerns that this technique should not be used in human beings but also to make sure that we are able to use it for the purposes where there is a benefit."

What better benefit than to bring back Jesus Christ ?