6.4 Cloning

Question 1

Name a use of cloning in agriculture

Answer 1

Produce new, useful animals

Question 2

What is tissue culture?

Answer 2

An expensive process to clone plants by taking small groups of cells from a plant and growing them under special conditions

Question 3

Why is tissue culture used instead of the plant cuttings?

Answer 3

Reproduces large numbers of a rare or top quality plant

Question 4

Name a way that animals can be cloned

Answer 4

Embryo transplants

Question 5

Explain the process of an embryo transplant

Answer 5

An embryo with unspecialised cells split into smaller groups of cells. Each group of genetically identical cells is transplanted and allowed to develop in a host animal

Question 6

Why is it more difficult to clone animals than plants?

Answer 6

• takes longer to develop in animals
• there have to be enough hosts
• some embryos die during development
• more stages for animal cloning

Question 7

Why are animals sometimes genetically modified before being cloned?

Answer 7

To produce useful things

Question 8

How can plants be quickly and cheaply cloned?

Answer 8

Taking cuttings from a mature plant and growing them

Question 9

What are a disadvantage to plant cloning?

Answer 9

Must keep the conditions exactly the same

Question 10

Explain the process of embryo cloning in animals.

Answer 10

1. Fertilise the gametes to make an embryo
2. Split the embryo into separate cells
3. The new cells begin to divide and form embryos
4. Insert the new embryos into host animals
5. The offspring are all identical to each other