cloning and genetic engineering

Question 1

what do gardeners do with cuttings of plants?

Answer 1

1. cut parts of a plant off and plant it in moist conditions, which then grows into a clone of the original plant
2. these plants can be produced quickly and cheaply

Question 2

what does tissue culture do?

Answer 2

1. few plant cells are put in a growth medium with hormones and they grow into new plant(clones of the parents)
2. these plants can be made very quickly, in very little space, and can be grown all year round

Question 3

animal clones by embryo transplants. how is this done?

Answer 3

1. sperm cells are taken from a e.g. a bull, and egg cells are taken from a cow. The sperms are then used to artificially fertilise an egg cell. The embryo that develops is spilt many times to form clones.
2. the cloned embryos can be implanted in lots of other cows, until they become baby calves(they will be genetically identical to each other)

Question 4

adult cell cloning. how is this done?

Answer 4

1. unfertilised egg and removing its genetic material(the nucleus) Then a complete set of chromosomes from a adult body cell(skin cell)is inserted into the ‘empty’ egg cell.
2. the egg is then electrical shocked, this makes it divide
3. when the embryo is a ball of cells, its implanted into a adult female(surrogate mother)

Question 5

genetic engineering. what is it/how is it done?

Answer 5

1. uses enzymes to cut and paste genes
   the useful gene is cut out of one of the organisms chromosomes with enzymes
2. enzymes are then used to cut out another organisms chromosome and to insert the useful one
3. scientists use this method to do all sorts of things- e.g. the human insulin gene can be inserted into bacteria to produce human insulin

Question 6

genetically modified crops?pros and cons

Answer 6

pros; increase the yield of crops, making more food
people in LICs often lack nutrients, so the crops could be modified to have the nutrients for these people

cons; it could effect the number of weeds and flowers(and so insects could die)-reducing farmland biodiversity