Genetics

Genetics

I interviewed Alicia Smith who attends the University of California at San Diego. I opened up the interview with a simple question asking her how she felt about the legality of the new rage in genetics: cloning. She said she thought that it is an extremely intriguing process but it should not be legal. I also asked her about how she felt on the subject of bringing back the dinosaurs. She said that even if we could come up with the dinosaur DNA, we wouldn't have the mediums to produce an actual dinosaur. In a recent movie titled Jurassic Park, their theory on bringing back dinosaurs was to use the blood from a misquito, that was preserved in hardened amber. She said it was a good idea but wouldn't work because there wouldn't be enough blood in the misquito to extract enough to get the DNA code. She had some very good thoughts on the subject of cloning humans. I asked her she thought that if we were to clone a human, would the clone act and think exactly the same as the original? She said "No, for several reasons, the first being the fact that a good majority of personality and ability is impacted and created by the living environment therefore a clone's personality and abilities will undoubtedly differ greatly from the original due to the different environment in which the clone will grow. The second major reason a clone would differ from the original concerns the complexity of genetics. One property of genetics is called incomplete penetrance. In basic terms it means that genes randomly can be ignored by the body. For example a certain percentage of people with the allele for a disease of incomplete penetrance will be normal (IE: not affected by the disease). Therefore, though a clone and its original have identical alleles, they may not both be affected by the same ones. Also, because females have two X chromosomes, by a process known as dosage compensation. An X chromosome in each cell is, in effect, turned off. Because this is a random process, it will be different in the clone than the original resulting indifferent traits."

After hearing all of this, I conclude that it is dangerous to play with genetics. Alicia says "Genetics is more complex, than we could ever hope to master."