The diversity of life is so complex that science is surprising. In recent decades, the scientific community has been interested in the search for equal copies of living beings: cloning.
Cloning can be defined as the process of obtaining identical individuals, in the sense that they share the same genetic heritage.
There is natural cloning in the case of identical twins. In its embryonic process, the zygote gives rise to two identical embryos. However, cloning refers to the copying of an individual through non-reproductive cells, obtained from an adult individual, that is, starting from somatic cells. This is possible because each cell of an organism has in its nucleus the information of what the organism is like as a whole. The explanation for this phenomenon is based on the fact that all cells in the organism come from one cell (the unicellular embryo) and each time it divides, they generate identical copies.
Through laboratory techniques it is possible to create copies of cells and, therefore, clone them
From a skin cell one can get another identical one and from a cardiac type another identical one. This process still has some problems, since when these cells are differentiated, they “forget” what the organism is like as a whole.
This difficulty does not prevent that, in some circumstances, it is possible to obtain the exact cloning of a living being, for example, in the case of the sheep Dolly, where a replica was obtained through the implantation of a cloned embryo in a “ewe for hire”.
Cloning means non-sexual reproduction, so it happens artificially
Animal or plant cloning creates transgenic organisms due to their genetic manipulation. This has an obvious use when creating individuals with certain characteristics. Let’s think, for example, of a transgenic cereal with more food properties, more resistant and with more possibilities for cultivation. Despite these possible advantages, there are doubts and fears regarding the cloning of animal and plant species.
In the case of human cloning, the doubts are even greater. In fact, there is an ongoing ethical debate about the moral validity of these techniques as applied to humans. As for therapeutic cloning, its usefulness in curing certain diseases that were once seen as incurable is unquestionable. However, any cloning process without tight control can have consequences that are difficult to predict.
