Name: Emily B.
Status: Student
Age: 17
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: December 2002
Question:
If the nucleus is extracted from an adult animal cell and
placed into an enucleated egg, how would it be possible to distinguish
the cloned individual from the original?
Replies:
It might be easy and might be difficult. For one, the new individual would be
a different age than the donor. Also, there are some environmental factors
that work on phenotype-think of genetic twins-they are not so identical that
you cannot tell them apart. Also, if the clone is a female, there are some
phenotypes that the result of X-inactivation.
For instance, last year a cat
was cloned-they called it CC for copycat. But the clone did not look like
her
donor because the donor was a calico cat. Calico pattern is formed by random
inactivation of one X chromosome or the other after the 32 cell of
development in the embryo. So even though the kitty is genetically identical
to the DNA donor, she does not look like her.
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