• Question: how can you clone animals?

    Asked by jamie to Elliot on 16 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      Good question.

      So the reason that you are you is your unique DNA, so cloning is all about making a copy of you with the same DNA. The way this has been done is to take an egg cell and remove all of its DNA. You then inject the nucleus from a cell of whatever it is you are wanting to clone into this empty egg cell, which contains all of the DNA. So you end up with an egg cell with only the DNA from the thing you want to clone.

      You then get this egg to start dividing (I think they use a pulse of electricity for this, a bit like frankenstein but on a much, much smaller scale!) and implant the egg into a womb. If you are lucky, this egg will then grow into a clone – a copy with the exact same DNA.

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