1. Why We Should Clone Extinct Animals By Edward Kim Mrs. Morgan Period 9
2. Basic Principles of Genetics 1. From what we know about alleles, dominant alleles’ traits always appear in an organism, while a recessive one only appears when the dominent allele is not present. 2. However, some traits are mixed, so both of the alleles appear when they are present, forming a mix. 3. If you are curious about how the alleles of the Two Parents combine for the offspring, I suggest using a Punett square.
3. Human Genome Project 1. The Human Genome Project began in 1990, whereas scientists hoped to identify all 20,000 – 25,000 genes in human DNA, as well as determining the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make it up. 2. Some issues aroused though, as for example, (ethical) who should have access to personal genetic information? And how will it be used? There is also problems (legal) as to such who owns the genetic information as to property, as well as funding. There are also problems where (social) some fear about people having genes with problems that might affect other people, thus leading to discrimination. 3. Because of the Human Genome Project, when President Bush came into office, he signed the law called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimation Act, (also known as GINA,) it protected the rights of Americans from discrimination from their information based on genetic tests.
4. Genetic Disorder 1. The disorders, single gene disorder, chromosome abnormality, and multifactorial disorder all are caused by abonormal things, such as an extra chromosome or a mutation. They all are disorders to our genetic information. 2. Genetic counseling can be useful to prevent them to pass on to future children in risk, as it can “detect” disorders before parents have children, as well as curing them. 3. People can use karyotypes to predict genetic disorders by studying the normal amounts and processes of human chromosomes, so they can easily find if there is a disorder.
5. Scientific Advancements in Cloning In November 1951, a team of scientists in Philadelphia who was working in the lab of Robert Briggs had cloning a frog embryo. The scientists had taken the nucleus out of a frog embryo and used it to replace the nucleus of another frog egg cell. Once it had a full set of chromosomes, it began meiosis, and now today it is the traditional method of cloning. Possilbly the most famous advancement in cloning is Dolly the sheep. Dolly was the first ever animal to be ever cloned from an adult, however it had taken 277 attempts before getting her right.
6. Argument 1 One of the most important reasons why it would be good to clone extinct animals is to study them, and gain information that we possibly could not gain from just fossils and historical writings. For example, if say, we were able to create a Dodo Bird and present it as a public attraction, people would be able to get educational value from learning from the actual thing, as such, what color would its feathers be? Not only that, if we were able to successful, it might be able to let us learn more about things such as origin, evolution, the earth, and evidence of theories we already have come up with.
7. Argument 2 For what might even be even more important than knowledge could be undoing human wrongs in the past. People in the 1700s to today have done hunting, harm to the environment and other things that could extinct every last species on the planet. Even if we have zoos, and preserves to protect the animals, it may not be fast enough to keep them at a good enough population so they are not considered endangered. So by this, cloning to some people may be the only way to save species we destroyed. Of the most part, humans have faulted themselves to destroy these animals just to benefit ourselves, and cloning is one solution to undoing the damage. If a species of an ecosystem were to become extinct, it could mess up the environment greatly, as such for an example, if a lion and crocodile were removed from Africa, smaller predators wouldn’t have as much competition and would easily kill all the prey. If that were to happen, there would also be no food source left for those predators, and they would starve to death. Here is a quote from Mike Archer, who is the Director of the Australian Museum in Sydney about what he thinks, “…to redress our immoral actions when we willfully and wrongly exterminated these animals in the first place.”
8. Argument 3 Before we even start the cloning process, in order to clone the animal, we require the animal’s DNA. Even if we have the DNA, it still has to be a complete strand that is undamaged, and finding undamaged DNA from an extinct dinosaur that died millions of years ago is highly unlikely. Sure it can be possible with a mammoth or a dodo bird extinct only centuries to thousands of years ago, but it won’t seem very likely at all to find a perfect strand of DNA that could last millions of years isn’t going to happen. HOWEVER, dinosaur and mammoth DNA HAS BEEN DISCOVERED, in the mammoth’s case, already 70% of the genome has already been found, as intact specimens have been discover frozen in ice. For a dinosaur’s case, the discovery of DNA was inside the marrow of fossilized bones. Living tissue was there! But simply just the discovery of DNA will not be enough, as you need a lot more DNA in order to be able to clone the animal. What’s more, is that you require do some genetic engineering to the DNA strand, as there are holes in them. In Jurassic Park, they filled the gaps with frog DNA, however that will simply just create either a mutantion, or a hybrid of a frog/dinosaur. Even if it’s just little, it still has to be a complete strand without a mix, as for an example, some primates have around 98.8% DNA that is identical to ours. Just that little difference makes a completely different animal.
9. Argument 4 A disadvantage in cloning anything extinct for example, is how difficult it is to even clone in the first place! It has taken 277 attempts to succeed in cloning Dolly the sheep, as the embryos all died together. Even if cloning is successful, cloned animals die early because of certain problems, such as being exposed to disease, or even have trouble breathing. And for an extinct animal, no one knows about how exactly its needs are, as such as temperature, or the amount of oxygen it requires. For a dinosaur, or any other creature that lays eggs, their embryos require nutrition from their eggs, and as stated above, no one knows exactly what it needs. In Jurassic Park, the scientists used plastic eggs to contain the dinosaur embryos, however, it simply won’t do any good as for example, a turtle’s egg will not contain the nutrience necessary for fish. The DNA also has to be inserted into it’s proper oocyte, otherwise it will not get it’s proper nutriention within heredity. Even if it is with a related species with the pedigree with the extinct animal.
10. Conclusion While there are still so many obstacles in which prevents us from cloning dinosaurs, we still might have the chance to clone a creature from the Ice Age, in which is a mammoth. I do agree we should invest some of the government’s money into cloning extinct animals, as it will do us good in information, however, I would suggest doing it sometime in the future when technology is more perfected, in which that will be the time for research. As in where to invest, I say into cloning technology and for people to research more about extinct species’ DNA.
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