The perception by humans of what is doable is itself a great determiner of future events. Thus, the successful sheep cloning experiment leading to “Dolly” by Ian Wilmut and associates at Roslin Institute, Midlothian, UK, compels us to look in the mirror and consider the issue of human cloning. Should it occur, and if not, how should that opposing mandate be managed? If human cloning should have...

The instability of recombinant clones accommodating large or full-length viral genomes is frequently a technical challenge in RNA virus research. In an attempt to establish a rapid plasmid-based reverse genetics system that utilizes long RT-PCR technique (LRP), similar difficulty was encountered in the cloning of 9022-bp LRP amplicon. All HCV genotype 1a strains used for LRP cloning showed a re...

Interspecies somatic cell nuclear transfer (iSCNT) is an emerging assisted reproductive technology (ART) for preserving Nature's diversity. The scarcity of oocytes from some species makes utilisation of readily available oocytes inevitable. In the present study, we describe the successful cloning of coyotes (Canis latrans) through iSCNT using oocytes from domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris o...

A variety of methods have been developed for cloning PCR products, including blunt-end cloning (1), restriction cut back (2), ligation-independent cloning (3), uracil DNA–glycosylase (UDG) treatment of uracil-containing deoxyoligonucleotide primers (4,5) and TA cloning (6–8). Blunt-end cloning of PCR products often requires treatment of PCR products to polish the ends (9). Even with treatments,...

Movies and science fiction novels for years have depicted ancient and exotic animals resurrected from extinction by mad scientists and out-of-thisworld phenomena. While in actuality we have yet to see any such resurrections, the theoretical results once thought to be science fiction fantasy have come a step closer to reality as powerful technology has been developed which allows the production ...

Cloning is asexual reproduction. That means that an individual can be created without the involvement of any egg and sperm cells. Cloning generates a copy of the cloned organism’s genesunlike sexual reproduction, in which the offspring takes one half of its genes from the egg cell and the other half from the sperm cell. The cloning debate arouses intense emotions, which presumably has to do wit...

The no-cloning theorem of Wootters, Zurek [1] and Dieks [2] shows that it is impossible to devise a means of perfectly replicating an arbitrary, unknown quantum state. While such an ideal cloning machine cannot be constructed, this important result does not prohibit cloning strategies which have a limited degree of success. Numerous interesting contributions have been made to this subject by ma...

It has been shown theoretically that a light amplifier working on the physical principle of stimulated emission should achieve optimal quantum cloning of the polarization state of light. We demonstrate close-to-optimal universal quantum cloning of polarization in a standard fiber amplifier for telecom wavelengths. For cloning 1-->2 we find a fidelity of 0.82, the optimal value being 5 / 6=0.83.

We developed one-step sequence- and ligation-independent cloning (SLIC) as a simple, cost-effective, time-saving, and versatile cloning method. Highly efficient and directional cloning can be achieved by direct bacterial transformation 2.5 min after mixing any linearized vector, an insert(s) prepared by PCR, and T4 DNA polymerase in a tube at room temperature.