Exam Focus

Exam Focus

Cloning questions at GCSE most commonly focus on the process and ethics. This topic appears on AQA Paper 2 and Edexcel 1BI0/1 (Paper 1). Key areas to prepare:

• Dolly the sheep process (3-4 marks): Know each step in order. Examiners expect: remove nucleus from body cell, remove nucleus from egg cell, insert body cell nucleus into egg, electric shock, implant into surrogate. Missing any step costs marks.
• Tissue culture (2-3 marks): Describe what it is used for (rapid production of identical plants, preserving rare species) and the basic method (cells in sterile nutrient medium).
• Ethical considerations (2-4 marks): Always present both sides. "It is wrong to clone humans" alone scores nothing — explain why some people hold that view and why others disagree.
• Clone vs identical twin: Know that both are natural clones with identical DNA, but identical twins develop from a split fertilised egg while Dolly was produced by nuclear transfer from an adult body cell.

Edexcel 1BI0 style: Edexcel Paper 1 (1BI0/1) may use a stimulus passage about a conservation programme using tissue culture to preserve an endangered plant species, or a news extract about therapeutic cloning research. Apply your knowledge to the given context. The command word "Evaluate" on cloning ethics questions requires balanced arguments on both sides with a justified conclusion. Edexcel mark schemes use "Allow..." to credit a range of ethical arguments — you do not need to memorise a specific list, but each argument must be explained rather than simply stated.