Should We Clone Legend Beatle John Lennon… Or Let It Be?

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The post Should We Clone Legend Beatle John Lennon… Or Let It Be? appeared first on Kev Baker Show.

Should We Clone Legend Beatle John Lennon… Or Let It Be?

Forget resurrected celebrities via hologram, lets go for the real deal.. almost!

Not to long from now, we could well be booking our tickets to go and see the reformed Beatles, complete with a freshly cloned John Lennon and perhaps even the real Paul McCartney!

What am I talking about? Cloning technology, that’s what.

In the past week we seen a lock of Lennon’s hair being sold at auction, and add to that there’s one of his teeth in the possession of a dentist that has himself talked about the potential to bring back Lennon via this controversial technology.

Cloning is nothing new, and coming from Scotland I remember well the famous sheep that was the first of its cloned kind, Dolly. That was 20 years ago and today the technology has jumped forward by 20 light years!

On The Kev Baker Show recently, we covered the story about a Biotech company in S.Korea relocating to the mainland China because there were less ethical barriers to human cloning. You will go on to read how one of the scientists involved, and Chinese firms, have already fallen under suspicion of creating human cloned embryo’s in the past, so don’t think this is some kind of Sci-Fi woo that is something out of the X-Files.

There are disadvantages to cloning, with shorter life spans being cited. However, that is easily rectified with the advancements in gene editing technology called CRISPR. The mad scientists can easily add or remove sequences of DNA to augment any down side to the clone that may be experienced.

So, forget holographically projected Tupac, because we now have the ability to go one better and bring back the real deal, albeit a cloned copy.

So, I ask you , is cloning something we should twist and shout about?

Maybe to get away from international law and bioethics they could carry out the science under the sea onboard, oh, say a Yellow Submarine. Or if that fails, phone Putin and get it Back in the USSR!

Are we ready for this “Brave New World”

From Kristina Killgrove

FORBES

In 2011, the tooth of famous Beatle John Lennon was sold at auction, and just today a lock of his hair was sold.  Both bits of his body fetched over $30,000 in a creepy capitalist twist. More importantly, though, they raise the possibility that someone, somewhere, at some point will want to clone him. But is this possible? Or ethical? The answers are probably not and definitely not.

It is possible to clone animals, and this was done way back in 1952 with a tadpole and then a fish.  But most people are familiar with Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal cloned in 1996. Scientists took an adult sheep cell, removed the nucleus that includes nuclear DNA, and then inserted that nuclear DNA into an egg cell that had its nucleus removed as well. Voilà – a clone… sort of. It’s not an exact clone, as some genes come from the egg cell’s mitochondria.

It’s not likely that a scientist could extract Lennon’s nuclear DNA from either his hair or his tooth, as these remains are decades old and have surely deteriorated over the years.  Still, we can get decent DNA from ancient remains — especially from the roots of teeth — so let’s say it is possible.  We then run into problems with the cloning process itself.

Cloning animals like fish and tadpoles is easier because their gestation periods are short, which means that the low success rate of cloning is easier to deal with than when we’re talking about mammals. More distressingly, cloned animals often have health issues and die younger than normal. Human cloning, then, is not possible right now, although scientists are working towards cloning embryonic cells for use in therapeutic practices….

CONTINUE READING HERE

PHYS.ORG

Nov 24th 2015

The world’s largest animal cloning factory is under construction in China, with plans to churn out dogs, horses and up to a million beef cattle a year, reports said, prompting online and scientific concerns Tuesday.

The 200-million-yuan ($31-million) facility will include cloning laboratories and a gene bank, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

It is being set up by Chinese biotechnology firm Boyalife and South Korea’s Sooam Biotech—whose founder was embroiled in controversy a decade ago over claims to have cloned human embryos—along with two Chinese research institutions.

It will develop animals such as pet and police dogs, racehorses and cows, to be sold on the open market on an industrial scale.

The factory in the northern port of Tianjin is set to start production next year, with initial capacity of 100,000 cattle embryos a year, growing to one million, Xinhua cited Boyalife chairman Xu Xiaochun as saying.

“Chinese farmers are struggling to produce enough beef cattle to meet market demand,” he said.

Boyalife reposted Xinhua’s report on its website Tuesday.

But social media users expressed scepticism over consumer appetite for cloned meat, pointing out that the plant will be near the site of chemical explosions that killed at least 165 people in August, and that China is plagued with food safety scandals.

“Is this meat going to be sold in South Korea or China? If in China, please make our leaders eat it first,” said one user.

READ MORE HERE

From Sarah Zhang

May 5th 2015

Gizmodo

CRISPR, a new genome editing tool, could transform the field of biology—and a recent study on genetically-engineered human embryos has converted this promise into media hype. But scientists have been tinkering with genomes for decades. Why is CRISPR suddenly such a big deal?

The short answer is that CRISPR allows scientists to edit genomes with unprecedented precision, efficiency, and flexibility. The past few years have seen a flurry of “firsts” with CRISPR, from creating monkeys with targeted mutations to preventing HIV infection in human cells. Earlier this month, Chinese scientists announced they applied the technique to nonviable human embryos, hinting at CRISPR’s potential to cure any genetic disease. And yes, it might even lead to designer babies. (Though, as the results of that study show, it’s still far from ready for the doctor’s office.)

In short, CRISPR is far better than older techniques for gene splicing and editing. And you know what? Scientists didn’t invent it.

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