Thoughts on clones? Would this bother you?

Elf On A Shelf said:
Not always. If you look at racing and see how many full siblings relate to each others performances on the track there is usually one super star in the family, a few decent ones and a bunch of guff. The good ones go to stud but passing on their brilliance isn't always guaranteed. Nothing is. So a clone might not actually be as good as the original even given the exact same upbringing. As has been proven they tend to look different, behave differently, they are their own being. You would never know they were a clone if you stood it and it's original copy side by side.
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This is a really good point. I had an exceptionally well bred ex racehorse - half sister to two of the greatest NH horses of our time.

She was useless as a racehorse.

Her foals were equally useless.

She made an excellent polocrosse pony and enjoyed a bit of everything for the ten years she was with me before she died, but would never have reached the dizzying heights of her siblings. Breeding isn’t everything.
 
Bernster said:
Totally ignorant and therefor find it all a bit weird. Like, how come a clone isn’t a complete replica?! That’s my level of ignorance ?
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Because while genetically they would be the same, the environment has an impact on the expression of genes. I used to work in genetics by environment it's an interesting field ?.
 
Bernster said:
Totally ignorant and therefor find it all a bit weird. Like, how come a clone isn’t a complete replica?! That’s my level of ignorance ?
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I find it fascinating!

There is a genetic form of schizophrenia. But if you have twins, with identical genes, there is only a 50% chance that both will have schizophrenia.

There's a great book called the Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey of you want to read up on it. It's not too sciencey.


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ihatework said:
Could you link me to your research sources on this (sorry I’m being lazy) but am interested
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This is a good one, the key paragraph is

Using RNA sequencing, the researchers found multiple genes whose abnormal expression could lead to the high rate of death for cloned embryos, including failure to implant in the uterus and failure to develop a normal placenta. Looking at the extraembryonic tissue of the cloned cows at day 18, the researchers found anomalies in expression of more than 5,000 genes.
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https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/cow-gene-study-shows-why-most-clones-fail/
 
ycbm said:
This is a good one, the key paragraph is



https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/cow-gene-study-shows-why-most-clones-fail/
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OK, interesting, but doesn’t quite hit the spot for me.
Cavest that I’m not a genetics expert but what I can fathom is it’s essentially saying
1. High rate of embryo failure when cloning (I take that for granted)
2. They have evidence to suggest in the younger embryos (day 18) it’s down to gene expression making the embryo non viable (I assume given the next statement this is statistically significant)
3. Embryos lost later (day 34) didn’t show that genetic variation when compared to AI embryos. So presumably the more dominant reason was more non clone-genetic reasons.

Viable embryo’s that result in a live birth aren’t mentioned.

I don’t dispute that the consideration of copy mutations within clones is something to completely disregard, but I haven’t seen compelling evidence yet that there is a significant added risk when using a clone as a sire. But I concede I haven’t looked that hard (yet)
 
AShetlandBitMeOnce said:
It would bother me, I wouldn't even consider it.

It may sound a silly one, but my reason being that everytime I have seen humans interfere and engineer a natural process we have either made it worse, or there are catastrophic downsides.
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Weeeeeelll I think that depends, as pretty much all the food we eat and our pets have been genetically modified. Genetic engineering also led to the mass and cheap production of insulin. It's not all bad ?
 
shortstuff99 said:
Weeeeeelll I think that depends, as pretty much all the food we eat and our pets have been genetically modified. Genetic engineering also led to the mass and cheap production of insulin. It's not all bad ?
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Good point, well made!

I will further dumb my reason down to, it gives me the heebie jeebies and I don't like it :eek::p
 
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Elf On A Shelf said:
Not always. If you look at racing and see how many full siblings relate to each others performances on the track there is usually one super star in the family, a few decent ones and a bunch of guff. The good ones go to stud but passing on their brilliance isn't always guaranteed. Nothing is. So a clone might not actually be as good as the original even given the exact same upbringing. As has been proven they tend to look different, behave differently, they are their own being. You would never know they were a clone if you stood it and it's original copy side by side.
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And, for me, this begs the question...why bother..??? I still don't have a huge grasp on the genetics of it but it seems rather pointless to me, or I'm missing something..???
 
SatansLittleHelper said:
And, for me, this begs the question...why bother..??? I still don't have a huge grasp on the genetics of it but it seems rather pointless to me, or I'm missing something..???
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From a scientific point of view it is quite interesting. If they could refine it to only select the best genes that guarantee success it would be a game changer.

If you clone good horses people will use the stallion enough to see how the offspring get on which in turn leads to more knowledge.

Realistically it's all one big lab experiment.
 
LegOn said:
My only knowledge of it was the Cruising clones which did interest me. Cruising was known for not being the easiest stallion to ride and there was a lot of interviews at the time that if he hadnt of ended up with Trevor Coyle, he might have not have reached his now known potential. I know plenty of people who has Cruising offspring or bloodlines and they are known for being quirky, so need a certain type of rider to get the best out of them. So with the clones, it was interesting to see how they will progress because its seemed to be some of nurture rather than the nature that helped him reach his greatness!!

And then of course the obvious unknown health implications - which science cant really know until more time has passed, I'm not sure I would want to be part of that experiment. But it is no doubt very interesting.
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A family member has a cruising offspring. He's a very gentle horse. However, quirky is a good description! Someone mentioned that he was the quietest cruising horse they'd ever seen. The others must be interesting:D

Crusing's clones are competing now but there doesn't seem to be any news about them, I wonder if they are living up to their potential ?

When Trevor Coyne and Cruising's owner had a falling out, Cruising went to John Whitaker. The horse and he didn't gel and it didn't work out.
 
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mule said:
A family member has a cruising offspring. He's a very gentle horse. However, quirky is a good description! Someone mentioned that he was the quietest cruising horse they'd ever seen. The others must be interesting:D

Crusing's clones are competing now but there doesn't seem to be any news about them, I wonder if they are living up to their potential ?

When Trevor Coyne and Cruising's owner had a falling out, Cruising went to John Whitaker. The horse and he didn't gel and it didn't work out.
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They're both out jumping 1.20s. Not a big demand for 8yr olds, but they both look nice types.
We have a Cruising and he's a really lovely horse. He's spooky and a bit lazy, but he has a lovely character and was successful eventing to Advanced level
 
TheMule said:
They're both out jumping 1.20s. Not a big demand for 8yr olds, but they both look nice types.
We have a Cruising and he's a really lovely horse. He's spooky and a bit lazy, but he has a lovely character and was successful eventing to Advanced level
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It's interesting that a lot of his most successful offspring have been eventers.
 
Elf On A Shelf said:
Not always. If you look at racing and see how many full siblings relate to each others performances on the track there is usually one super star in the family, a few decent ones and a bunch of guff. The good ones go to stud but passing on their brilliance isn't always guaranteed. Nothing is. So a clone might not actually be as good as the original even given the exact same upbringing. As has been proven they tend to look different, behave differently, they are their own being. You would never know they were a clone if you stood it and it's original copy side by side.
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I know someone who's horse's dam or sire, I can't remember which, won the Kentucky Derby. Her horse was trained but was too slow to race.
 
Elf On A Shelf said:
From a scientific point of view it is quite interesting. If they could refine it to only select the best genes that guarantee success it would be a game changer.

If you clone good horses people will use the stallion enough to see how the offspring get on which in turn leads to more knowledge.

Realistically it's all one big lab experiment.
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Cloning is still against the rules in racing, I think? Is that to protect the breeding industry?
 
ycbm said:
Cloning is still against the rules in racing, I think? Is that to protect the breeding industry?
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Yeah we can't AI either which pisses off a lot of aussies who want to use Irish sires - they have to send the mare half way round the world.

No AI restricts the number of mares a stallion can cover in a season and thus protecting the value of the stallion & progeny as well as different bloodlines. If you could AI Galileo wouldn't be a £250k private invite fee he would be a few grand per straw and everyone would have a Galileo which would make the gene pool very small.

I dare say they will try cloning at some point but given that the results of it from other sectors hasn't been hugely successful it's not worth their time. Though saying that they will have people in labs working on it trying to refine the process to get the good genes and trying to weedle out the not so desirable ones.

Designer Babies.com
 
Errin Paddywack said:
I don't think our pets have been genetically modified except by selective breeding (step too far in many cases). To me genetically modified involves test tubes etc.
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Genetic modification is just the process of altering genes. Here is a reasonable definition:

Genetic modification is the process of altering the genetic makeup of an organism. This has been done indirectly for thousands of years by controlled, or selective, breeding of plants and animals. Modern biotechnology has made it easier and faster to target a specific gene for more-precise alteration of the organism through genetic engineering.

Therefore pretty much everything is genetically modified.
 
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