Cloning Flashcards
All 6 cards in this deck
What is tissue culture as a method of cloning plants?
Using small groups of cells from part of a plant, grown to produce identical new plants. It is used to preserve rare plant species and commercially in nurseries.
What are cuttings as a method of cloning plants?
An older, simple method where gardeners take pieces of a parent plant and grow them into many identical new plants.
What are the steps of cloning by embryo transplant?
e.g. cloning a prize cow
- Cells are split apart from a developing animal embryo before they become specialised.
- Each identical embryo is transplanted into a host mother.
- The host mothers give birth to calves genetically identical to each other.
What are the steps of adult cell cloning?
e.g. cloning an adult sheep
- The nucleus is removed from an unfertilised egg cell.
- The nucleus from an adult body cell, such as a skin cell, is inserted into the egg cell.
- An electric shock makes it divide into an embryo, which is inserted into the womb of an adult female: the lamb is a clone of the skin cell donor.
Give one benefit of cloning plants or animals.
Many organisms with the desired characteristics can be produced quickly and they are all genetically identical; it can also preserve rare species.
True or false? Cloning increases the genetic variation of a population.
False. Clones are genetically identical, so the gene pool is reduced and the whole population could be wiped out by one disease or environmental change.