Question: Do you believe that with the right technology, that we will be able to clone the DNA of a human and thus clone a human?

Seyyed Shah answered on 18 Jun 2012:

That is a very good question. The answer is that we don’t really know if a human could be cloned. From what we know of cloning animals, it might be possible.

Cloning human DNA (lets say human genes) is easy. All we need to do is put the gene into a vector (something that can be copied many times, normally in bacteria) and then put that gene into a bacterium. Certain proteins in the bacterium then copy the vector to make new vectors with the same gene inside. I do this regularly.

Cloning a complete human being is very tricky. It has been done with sheep (for example Dolly the sheep), and other animals. The way you do it is like this:

1 – Most cells in your body each have one copy of all your DNA. So, the DNA inside your skin cell is the same as the DNA inside your bone cell. And the DNA from any of these cells each cell could (in theory) be used to make a clone of you.

2 – Scientists have taken DNA from a cell of a sheep. The cell is put under a microscope, and then the DNA is taken up into a very small type of needle.

3 – The DNA is now put into another cell. For sheep, an egg cell was used. This is because these cells are very simple. they don’t have a very specialised function like the blood cells or nerve cells do. So, in egg cells the DNA can be ‘re-programmed’. This means that it can be tricked into making a new sheep. First, the DNA already in the egg cell is taken out with a needle, and then the new DNA is injected in.

4 – The cell is given an electric shock to make it start dividing. It starts to become a clump of cells, called an embryo. This is the same process for making a baby. The embryo is put inside a female sheep (who will be the clone’s mother) to develop normally. There is no way of going past the embryo stage outside of a mother.

Because humans are very complicated, no way has been found to clone them. Also, most countries in the world have banned research into cloning humans. But, some scientists are trying to do this secretly.