• Question: How did the idea of cloning first come about? Did it take a long time to find out how?

    Asked by henryjones to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 19 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      Hi Henry

      I suppose really, people have been cloning for a long time – have you ever seen anyone take a cutting from a plant and then grow a whole new plant from it? My grandad used to do this all the time! He would take cuttings from plants whenever he spotted one he liked! I suppose that in its simplest form is what we would call cloning – the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals (or organisms).

      Maybe you are thinking of cloning in terms of molecular cloning where we take bacteria, insert new genes and then produce thousands of clones of the new bacterium. The first time this happened was in 1972 and was possible because of molecular biology which gave us a whole set of tools in the lab to cut pieces of DNA and then join them together using special enzymes. Since then, things have become more elaborate and we can clone genes or bits of DNA from many different organisms. For example I have cloned DNA from mammals and put them into bacteria. From start to finish, it takes between 1 – 2 weeks to do so it’s pretty quick! This technology developed from the work of all of those involved in the discovery of the DNA double helix – James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins and it took a good 20 years before the first cloned piece of DNA was produced!

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      Thinking along the Dolly the sheep line: Cloning in the sense of producing a genetically identical individual from an organism that does not reproduce asexually is quite new. Wikipedia says it started in the 50’s with frogs. The first cloned mammal was Dolly born in 1996.
      Cloning is really inefficient- 227 attempts were necessary to create one sheep!
      Here is a list of cloned animals, interesting to browse- they cloned extinct species and racing horses.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_have_been_cloned

    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      Cloning means 2 things – one is DNA cloning, the other is cloning animals. They use the same word, because they’re both to do with making multiple identical copies of the same thing. But DNA cloning is basically factory production of a molecule, whereas animal cloning makes identical living organisms!

      DNA cloning took ages, but was the foundation of nearly all modern biology. It all happened in the 60s. I was the first person in my PhD lab to clone DNA; now every lab has people cloning.

      Animal cloning was first done by a posh and eccentric English gent named John Gurdon. Who coincidentally got the Nobel prize this year for it. I don’t think it was too hard for him – but he chose a lucky creature (clawed toads…) to do it on.

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