CLONING

By: Valdemir Mota de Menezes, the Scribe:

Cloning

Our lesson today brings a controversial subject: cloning!
The so-called therapeutic cloning is intended to replace a diseased organ with a healthy patient's own previously cloned from healthy cells. This would avoid many problems like rejection and delay to get donors.
The world knew thanks to cloning a sheep named Dolly, clonedfrom an adult cell. The cloning of humans is forbidden, but who says that has not already been done?
But how can you make another identical organism from an adult cell? To understand how we can before we need to clarify some concepts. Everyone has heard about the genes, but what are they?
Genes are the units forming the chromosomes, the chromosomes are composed of random sequences of an organic compound called nucleotide, so we can answer that genes are random strings of nucleotides. It is the gene that is any information relevant to our organism, for example, eye color, skin color, how to synthesize a protein.
Another concept is that despite all our cells contain the same genes, genes are active in a cell that are not active in others. An example for clarity, if a gene hypothetically called the gene is active in a cell X, this is not the cell Y and so on. Every cell in our body has a different sequence of active genes, thus perform different functions.
But if we want to clone an organism, it is necessary that all genes are functioning and not just a specific set. To solve this problem the researchers collected an adult cell and placed in a culture medium with few nutrients. We can say then that the cell is "starving". When this happens, ie when the environment in which the cell is not ideal, she enters a state of "numbness", reducing its activity and activating all genes.
Ready! Problem solved!
The next step is to get an oocyte (female sex cell) and remove its nucleus, why? Being an adult cell, it has genes specific assets,right! We are trying to clone another body, then removed the nucleus of the oocyte and transferred the nucleus of our cell that was "starving," he recalls, she has opened all genes. Now just transfer this new sex cell in the womb and wait for pregnancy!!
When a new end will be identical, or a clone of the original. Cloning is not super idea, it is only an imitation of nature ... when our cells reproduce, they produce natural clones, whenbacteria reproduces, it also produces a natural clone.