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102 /JAIN STUDIES AND SCIENCE
engineers have achieved several landmark successes since then. Heredity is the transfer of characteristics from parents to offsprings, either through their genes or through the social institution called inheritance. But this transfer is never perfect and the ecological environment also affects some traits of the next generation. Several cross breeds of plants and animals develop accidentally in the nature. These accidents actually turned into boon for genetic enthusiasts. They studied it carefully and devised a mechanism by which they could alter the seeds to obtain newer and better varieties of plants. In case of animals like dogs and cats, the process of artificial insemination allowed them to concentrate good quality
hromosomes and then attain the fertilisation. What nature does as a slow process, the human brain and technologically advanced devices are doing at a very fast pace. Mahapragya accepts this as a reality but insists that the some traits may be improvised but never expect a human child to born out of lions or vice-versa.
5.3. Cloning
The third and final step so far is that of cloning. This is an amazing concept and is the hardest blow to the concept of soul (atma-tatva). Through this process, the genetic engineers are trying to demonstrate that the birth of a new life form is nothing but a chemical process. A set of chemicals when groomed in a controlled environment, can give rise to a new life. Scientists call it donor-clone instead of parents-offspring. A clone is an identical copy created intentionally. Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing, or previously existing human, by growing cloned tissue from that individual. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplac cloning occurs during the natural process of reproduction.
World has seen cloned mice, sheep, horse etc. so far. Of these, the most popular case was that of cloned sheep, Dolly. She reportedly lived a short life span of around six-seven years as she aged faster due to genetic abnormality. In her case, scientists prepared the genetic material in a laboratory using eggs from a donor sheep and then initiated the process of cell multiplication by electrical implulses. In the next step, the egg was implanted in the donor womb and the process of birth took place in the due course.
An important fact to be noticed here is that since the clone is produced from single donor, its hereditary variance as compared to the donor is little, yet
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