Clone Zone
Copy-paste for living things: growing identical plants from cuttings, and the egg-swap trick that made Dolly the sheep.
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Clone Zone 🐑
A **clone** is a genetically identical copy of an organism. In 1996, Dolly the sheep proved we could even clone an adult mammal. This module covers cloning plants (the everyday kind) and cloning animals (the headline-grabbing kind) — and why clones bring **no new variation**.
Cloning plants 🌱
Plants are easy to clone, in two main ways: • **Cuttings** — an old, cheap method: a piece of a parent plant grows into a genetically identical new plant. Gardeners do it all the time. • **Tissue culture** — growing **small groups of cells** from a plant into many identical plants. Used to preserve **rare** plants and to mass-produce commercial or GM ones.
Match the method
- Taking cuttings
- Tissue culture
- Embryo transplant
- Adult cell cloning
- Growing a piece of a parent plant into an identical plant
- Growing small groups of cells into many identical plants
- Splitting an early animal embryo and implanting the parts
- Putting an adult cell's nucleus into an empty egg (Dolly)
All the same
Why do cloned organisms show no genetic variation?
- They are genetically identical copies of the parent
- Because they mutate more than normal
- Because they have two parents
- Because the environment makes them the same
Cloning animals: embryo transplants 🐄
Animals are harder, but there are two methods. The first is **embryo transplants**: Cells are split apart from a developing **embryo** — **before they specialise** — and each grows into an identical embryo. These are then **implanted into host mothers**. It is used to clone prize farm animals.
The right moment
In an embryo transplant, at what stage are the embryo cells split apart?
- Before the cells have specialised (differentiated)
- After the animal is fully grown
- From an adult's body cells
- Just after birth
Cloning an adult: Dolly 🔬
The second method is **adult cell cloning** (somatic-cell nuclear transfer) — how **Dolly** was made. The trick is to give an egg cell the genes of an **adult** body cell: take an egg, remove its nucleus, drop in the nucleus from an adult cell, shock it into dividing, and implant the embryo.
How Dolly was made
An interactive activity.
True of cloning
Pick the TWO correct statements about cloning.
- The clones are genetically identical to the original
- Cloning produces no new genetic variation
- Cloning creates brand-new alleles
- Each clone is a different species
Not to be confused
How is cloning different from selective breeding and genetic engineering?
- Cloning makes genetically identical copies with no new variation
- Cloning inserts a gene from another species
- Cloning selects the best offspring over generations
- Cloning creates lots of new variation
In the exam 🎓
Copies made. Grade-9 habits for cloning: • **Plants**: **cuttings** (cheap, simple) and **tissue culture** (small groups of cells → many identical plants). • **Animals**: **embryo transplants** (split an early embryo) and **adult cell cloning** (adult nucleus → empty egg → shock → implant, like **Dolly**). • Cloning = **genetically identical, no new variation** — don't confuse it with breeding (selects variation) or engineering (inserts a gene).