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When cloning Dolly the sheep.

Why did she need a surrogate mother? Please explain the whole process as I did not understand from the lesson today.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/add_ocr_gateway/living_growing/cloningrev3.shtml

This explains it well
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Original post by hxfsxh


I've come across that source already.. I still would like to know why their is a foster or surrogate mother. Thank you regardless.
Because she was cloned, they enucleated the egg cell of her surrogate mother, and enucleated the nucleus of a body cell of the sheep Dolly was cloning, then put them together. They used electricity to stimulate the new cell, and as the nucleus had a full set of chromosomes it performed mitosis, replicating itself and then dividing into two daughter cells (which were therefore genetically identical) and once this had formed as an embryo, it was placed back into the surrogate mother, who then went on to give birth to Dolly. The case study of Dolly is used because she was shortly put down after being born, because of the medical conditions she faced being a clone. Furthermore, a lot of embryos died before Dolly fully developed, which is another ethic you should consider for the exam.

I didn't click on the BBC link so I don't know if I've answered your question or just regurgitated what was said on bitesize, hope I helped anyway haha
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Original post by caitlinford3
Because she was cloned, they enucleated the egg cell of her surrogate mother, and enucleated the nucleus of a body cell of the sheep Dolly was cloning, then put them together. They used electricity to stimulate the new cell, and as the nucleus had a full set of chromosomes it performed mitosis, replicating itself and then dividing into two daughter cells (which were therefore genetically identical) and once this had formed as an embryo, it was placed back into the surrogate mother, who then went on to give birth to Dolly. The case study of Dolly is used because she was shortly put down after being born, because of the medical conditions she faced being a clone. Furthermore, a lot of embryos died before Dolly fully developed, which is another ethic you should consider for the exam.

I didn't click on the BBC link so I don't know if I've answered your question or just regurgitated what was said on bitesize, hope I helped anyway haha


Oh you have helped very much, many thanks! You're very intelligent, thank you. So, there was a surrogate mother because a great amount of embryos died, they used surrogate mothers so that they could experiment on an array of sheep at the same time thus increasing the chance of actually being successful within a shorter time period?
Original post by melissadh
Oh you have helped very much, many thanks! You're very intelligent, thank you. So, there was a surrogate mother because a great amount of embryos died, they used surrogate mothers so that they could experiment on an array of sheep at the same time thus increasing the chance of actually being successful within a shorter time period?


No there was a surrogate mother to hold the embryo and carry it in her womb. You could take the gene of a sheep you wanted to clone, and put it back into the sheep to grow as an embryo, it wouldn't be ethically right to make a sheep give birth to a genetic copy of itself and it probably wouldn't work. The surrogate mother is there to deliver the lamb, the whole process wouldn't work without it
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Oh! I see, thank you! That makes sense. Thank you again for your time.

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