According to Reuters, U.S. scientists successfully cloned a black-footed ferret using somatic cells from a dead and frozen wild animal for 33 years, which was named the black-footed ferret, which is the first time that the United States has cloned an endangered species native to compensate for the genetic diversity of the existing population. Noleen Walsh, head of mountain-prairie areas at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said: "While this study is only preliminary, this is the first clone of an endangered species native to North America and it provides a promising tool for the conservation of black-footed ferrets." ”
Black-footed ferret
The black-footed ferret is a stoat endemic to the Americas , and is thought to have become extinct in the wild because of the decline in the population of the human active stoat. Fortunately, in 1981, a small group of black-footed ferrets was again discovered on a farm in Wyoming, USA, and with the purpose of restoring the black-footed ferret population, the United States captured this small group of black-footed ferrets and carried out breeding programs. However, the original small group of black-footed ferrets only had 7 offspring, and in the subsequent breeding, inbreeding inevitably occurred, which limited the biodiversity of black-footed ferrets, and in the long run, the genes of black-footed ferrets will continue to decline, and eventually they will no longer be able to reproduce naturally.
Today, with the help of cloning technology, it may be a little helpful to restore the population of black-footed ferrets. Vera, one of the last wild black-footed ferrets to be captured, died in the 1980s and was sent to the Frozen Zoo of the San Diego Zoo Global Organization in the United States, where she was fortunate to preserve the black-footed ferret's genes and curb the destruction of the chromosomes in somatic cells. Therefore, this is a key factor in the success of this clone, and this black-footed ferret has no surviving offspring, that is, its clone is not genetically related to the existing black-footed ferret, so this clone helps to restore a little bit of the black-footed ferret's genetic diversity.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Twitter
So far, cloning is a fairly mature technology that can be used to save endangered wildlife, but it can also be used to clone common livestock, and its technology extension, stem cell technology, can also be used to treat diseases. Although cloning is replication in many eyes, but only the replication of genes, cloned individuals are still independent growth, and the growth and development of organisms is also affected by the natural environment, its brain neuronal arrangement, molecular composition and cell donor is different, so they have different memories, personalities, replication is only the flesh, the inner consciousness is completely different.
Cloned black-footed ferret
The year before yesterday, China gave birth to the first cloned pet cat, and the genes of this cloned cat were extracted from a British shorthair cat, which cost 250,000 yuan. When the original pet cat was about to die, the cat owner moved the idea of cloning, so he found a special institution to extract the somatic cells of the pet cat, and after 60 days of gestation by the surrogate mother cat, the cloned cat garlic was born smoothly in natural delivery, and was identified as a cloned cat by a third-party agency. But the pet owner also has some regrets after cloning, because the cloned cat and garlic have certain differences in appearance, the difference in personality is even greater, and the purpose of replacing garlic with a cloned cat is also a failure, in addition to looking alike, this is two completely different cat individuals, similar to twins.
Garlic and pet cats that provide somatic cells
Cloning is not the same as replication. From a technical point of view, it should be possible to clone humans at present, after all, the current news of monkey cloning is often appearing, and the human group is so large. But there are many ethical issues, such as surrogacy in many countries and regions are illegal, cloning people need to find a female surrogate, and clones grow up is also a problem, from the age of him and somatic cell providers are very different, but the genes are highly similar, similar to identical twins, how to define the kinship of these two people is a problem, and there are more serious implications, clones have their own consciousness, then he grows up to do any experiment on him, it is also against humanity.
Garlic and surrogate female cats
The use of cloning to make people reborn is impossible, can only do the cloning and replication of the body, and his consciousness will also be an independent consciousness, unless it can accurately regulate the development of the brain and the birth of consciousness, need to be able to encode the consciousness of the body, and then from the embryonic stage of the brain began to differentiate and appear when it began to regulate, until the human development matured, which takes a decade or two. Even if it is possible to transfer consciousness in the future, when the clone grows to be in his twenties, people have their own consciousness, and forcibly transfer the consciousness of the somatic donor (the dead person), then the consciousness of the clone must be erased, which is no different from killing.
Clone monkeys
The use of cloning to regenerate people is difficult, and simply regulating the growth and development process from the fertilized egg to the teenage is a big project, which is also influenced by ethics. Modern as long as the use of human somatic cell cloning technology, do not wait until the formation of early embryos, that is, just from the single cell division into the same multiple cells to terminate the experiment, but also many countries prohibit (non-disease, artificially selected) pregnancy termination surgery reasons, when there is a pregnancy reaction or examination can see the gestational sac, the embryo has a little human form, then do these are actually strangling life.
Therefore, even if you want to achieve the rebirth of human beings, cloning is probably a impossible road, both for technical reasons and ethical reasons. Technology has two sides, and if cloning is applied uncontrolled, it can also lead to quite dangerous consequences.