What are twins? What is cloning?

What are twins? What is cloning? When two or more children are born together, we call them twins. It does not matter whether twins are of the same sex or look alike. But in some cases two twins are born who look alike and both are boys and not girls. Such twins are called identical twins. In the very first stage of the mother’s womb, an embryo can break apart for some reason and grow into two separate embryos. This is how identical twins are born due to natural causes. Since two organisms are created from one fertilized egg, the genes in their cells are also identical. Both of such twins are of the same sex and have similar appearance and nature. If two individuals grow up in different environments, their ecological character may differ.

Two animals with identical genes are called ‘clone’ in scientific language. Clones, i.e. identical twins, do not occur frequently in nature. But humans have now succeeded in artificially creating clones. In 1977, John was introduced to the term cloning when a female lamb named ‘Dolly’ was cloned from her mother’s cells in England.

It is possible to produce animals with identical genes using two different methods. The first method follows the process of creating twins naturally. It occurs in a container outside rather than in the mother’s womb. When a fertilized egg has just split into two cells, it is split into two separate cells and grown by cell division for a short period of time, allowing the two embryos to grow into a representative mother’s womb.

Since both embryos are formed from the same fertilized egg, their genes are identical i.e. they are clones of each other.

The second is the mechanism of translocation of the cytoplasmic nucleus. Any cell other than sperm and egg is called a somatic cell. In mammals, each cell has many chromosomes arranged in pairs in the nucleus. These chromosomes contain the gene atoms. In this method, a somatic cell of an animal is taken out of its nucleus and the transferred nucleus is inserted into the egg of a female of that species. After a few chemical processes the newly nucleated egg behaves like a fertilized egg. Once this ovum is implanted in the mother’s womb, it gradually develops into a full-fledged organism. Dolly is the first mammalian cloned daughter created in this way, as she was created from the mother’s own cells.

It is also possible to create human clones with the above methods. But there needs to be a deeper discussion about the ethics of human cloning. Currently, no country has given scientists the right to create human clones. It is known that cloning process has a great role in getting rid of genetic diseases that are inherited. However, through cloning, it has become possible to create organisms with special genes to perform many tasks required by humans.

A notable Bengali microbiologist Anand Chakraborty’s research on this matter. In 1971, he cloned a new bacterium that could eat mineral oil.

These bacteria can be used to purify sea water polluted by oil discharged from oil tankers. It was the first patent recognized as a human-made microbe.