Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction; this reproduction of an organism by itself without a mate is known as parthenogenesis. In the field of biotechnology, cloning is the process of creating cloned organisms of cells and of DNA fragments.
The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein that exhibits green fluorescence when exposed to light in the blue to ultraviolet range. The label GFP traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria and is sometimes called avGFP. However, GFPs have been found in other organisms including corals, sea anemones, zoanithids, copepods and lancelets.
Commercial animal cloning is the cloning of animals for commercial purposes, including animal husbandry, medical research, competition camels and horses, pet cloning, and restoring populations of endangered and extinct animals. The practice was first demonstrated in 1996 with Dolly the sheep.
Nuclear transfer is a form of cloning. The step involves removing the DNA from an oocyte, and injecting the nucleus which contains the DNA to be cloned. In rare instances, the newly constructed cell will divide normally, replicating the new DNA while remaining in a pluripotent state. If the cloned cells are placed in the uterus of a female mammal, a cloned organism develops to term in rare instances. This is how Dolly the Sheep and many other species were cloned. Cows are commonly cloned to select those that have the best milk production. On 24 January 2018, two monkey clones were reported to have been created with the technique for the first time.
Polly and Molly, two ewes, were the first mammals to have been successfully cloned from an adult somatic cell and to be transgenic animals at the same time. This is not to be confused with Dolly the Sheep, the first animal to be successfully cloned from an adult somatic cell where there wasn’t modification carried out on the adult donor nucleus. Polly and Molly, like Dolly the Sheep, were cloned at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The pGLO plasmid is an engineered plasmid used in biotechnology as a vector for creating genetically modified organisms. The plasmid contains several reporter genes, most notably the green fluorescent protein (GFP) and the ampicillin resistance gene. GFP was isolated from the jelly fish Aequorea victoria. Because it shares a bidirectional promoter with a gene for metabolizing arabinose, the GFP gene is expressed in the presence of arabinose, which makes the transgenic organism express its fluorescence under UV light. GFP can be induced in bacteria containing the pGLO plasmid by growing them on +arabinose plates. pGLO is made by Bio-Rad Laboratories.
Snuppy was an Afghan hound, the first dog clone. The puppy was created using a cell from an ear from an adult Afghan hound and involved 123 surrogate mothers, of which only two produced pups. The Department of Theriogenology and Biotechnology at Seoul National University, which cloned Snuppy, was led by Woo Suk Hwang. Snuppy has since been used in the first known successful breeding between cloned canines after his sperm was used to artificially inseminate two cloned females, which resulted in the birth of 10 puppies in 2008. In 2017, 4 clones of Snuppy were made by Sooam, and were the first clones made of a cloned dog, to investigate potential health effects of cloning.
The GFP-cDNA project documents the localisation of proteins to subcellular compartments of the eukaryotic cell applying fluorescence microscopy. Experimental data are complemented with bioinformatic analyses and published online in a database. A search function allows the finding of proteins containing features or motifs of particular interest. The project is a collaboration of the research groups of Rainer Pepperkok at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Stefan Wiemann at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ).
A transgene is a gene that has been transferred naturally, or by any of a number of genetic engineering techniques, from one organism to another. The introduction of a transgene, in a process known as transgenesis, has the potential to change the phenotype of an organism. Transgene describes a segment of DNA containing a gene sequence that has been isolated from one organism and is introduced into a different organism. This non-native segment of DNA may either retain the ability to produce RNA or protein in the transgenic organism or alter the normal function of the transgenic organism's genetic code. In general, the DNA is incorporated into the organism's germ line. For example, in higher vertebrates this can be accomplished by injecting the foreign DNA into the nucleus of a fertilized ovum. This technique is routinely used to introduce human disease genes or other genes of interest into strains of laboratory mice to study the function or pathology involved with that particular gene.
A frozen zoo is a storage facility in which genetic materials taken from animals are stored at very low temperatures (−196 °C) in tanks of liquid nitrogen. Material preserved in this way can be stored indefinitely and used for artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, and cloning. There are a few frozen zoos across the world that implement this technology for conservation efforts. Several different species have been introduced to this technology, including the Pyrenean ibex, Black-footed ferret, and potentially the white rhinoceros.
Brainbow is a process by which individual neurons in the brain can be distinguished from neighboring neurons using fluorescent proteins. By randomly expressing different ratios of red, green, and blue derivatives of green fluorescent protein in individual neurons, it is possible to flag each neuron with a distinctive color. This process has been a major contribution to the field of neural connectomics.
Douglas C. Prasher is an American molecular biologist. He is known for his work to clone and sequence the genes for the photoprotein aequorin and green fluorescent protein (GFP) and for his proposal to use GFP as a tracer molecule. He communicated his pioneering work to Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien, but by 1991 he was unable to obtain further research funding, and left academia. Eventually, he had to abandon science. Chalfie and Tsien were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work that they publicly acknowledged was substantially based on Prasher's work; through their efforts and those of others, he returned to scientific research in June 2010.
Genetically modified animals are animals that have been genetically modified for a variety of purposes including producing drugs, enhancing yields, increasing resistance to disease, etc. The vast majority of genetically modified animals are at the research stage while the number close to entering the market remains small.
Genetically modified fish are organisms from the taxonomic clade which includes the classes Agnatha, Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes whose genetic material (DNA) has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. In most cases, the aim is to introduce a new trait to the fish which does not occur naturally in the species, i.e. transgenesis.
Genetically modified mammals are mammals that have been genetically engineered. They are an important category of genetically modified organisms. The majority of research involving genetically modified mammals involves mice with attempts to produce knockout animals in other mammalian species limited by the inability to derive and stably culture embryonic stem cells.
Molecular cloning is a set of experimental methods in molecular biology that are used to assemble recombinant DNA molecules and to direct their replication within host organisms. The use of the word cloning refers to the fact that the method involves the replication of one molecule to produce a population of cells with identical DNA molecules. Molecular cloning generally uses DNA sequences from two different organisms: the species that is the source of the DNA to be cloned, and the species that will serve as the living host for replication of the recombinant DNA. Molecular cloning methods are central to many contemporary areas of modern biology and medicine.
ANDi is the first genetically modified rhesus monkey, who was born at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) on October 1, 2001. OHSU named the monkey ANDi because it stands for iDNA spelled backward.
Primordial follicle initiation and development varies by species; in the canine primordial follicle formation occurs 17–54 days post birth. At 17 days, primordial follicles, each of consists of a small oocyte and a single layer of flattened pre-granulosa cells, can first be observed in the cortical layer of the ovary. The follicles begin to proliferate, and are abundant by day 22. Even though primordial follicles will continue to form, between days 33 and 54 increasing numbers begin to degenerate, along with a decrease in ovarian cortical width. By day 36, primordial follicles occupy a narrow peripheral region of the ovarian cortex, while the rest of the cortical tissue is composed of degenerate primordial follicles, anovular cords and epitheloid cells.
Maya is a cloned female arctic wolf that was born from a beagle surrogate mother in China. She was born on June 10, 2022, and news of her birth was revealed to the public on September 19 of the same year at Harbin Polarland, in China's Heilongjiang Province, by the biotechnology company Sinogene.
