This definitions covers Key Definitions within Cloning for GCSE Biology. Cloning techniques, applications, and ethical considerations It is section 6 of 12 in this topic. Make sure you can use the exact wording confidently, because definition marks are often lost through vague language.
Topic position
Section 6 of 12
Practice
25 questions
Recall
20 flashcards
Key Definitions
Clone: An organism or cell that is genetically identical to another, produced asexually or by nuclear transfer techniques.
Embryo transplant: A technique in which an embryo produced by IVF or natural fertilisation is implanted into a surrogate mother to continue development, allowing one female to produce multiple offspring.
Adult cell cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer): The process of replacing the nucleus of an egg cell with a nucleus taken from a body (somatic) cell of an adult donor, then stimulating the egg to divide to produce a clone of the donor.
Tissue culture: Growing cells or tissues in a sterile nutrient medium outside a living organism. Used in plant cloning to grow large numbers of identical plants from a small sample.
Therapeutic cloning: Creating an embryo clone of a patient for the purpose of harvesting embryonic stem cells that are genetically compatible with the patient, for use in tissue repair or transplantation. The embryo is not implanted into a womb.
Dolly the sheep: The first mammal cloned from an adult body cell, born in 1996 at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. Dolly was cloned from a mammary gland cell of a Finn Dorset sheep, using a Scottish Blackface sheep as the surrogate mother.
Surrogate mother: A female animal into whose uterus an early embryo is implanted to carry the pregnancy to term. The surrogate provides the environment for development but does not contribute genetic material to the offspring.