_____History of Cloning______
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The history of cloning was not an automatic discovery and showing it to the rest of the world, like the discovery of penicillium notatum. It was a very rocky road, with ups and downs. Most of the excitement and shicking news comes from a few decades ago and even today.
Cloning was useful even thousands to years ago. Even if you didn't need to clone anything, some clones are just natural. Identical twins are clones. Back then (the first humans), people break apart the plant's stems and plant them on the soil. Since the two individual plants came from one plant, they have the same DNA and other stuff. Cloning doesn't have to be something technological and what nerdy geeks or scientists experiment. It's as simple as that. If you ever split up an earthworm, the two pieces will regenerate into two organisms.
Remember, people experimented clones in the 19th century. The first cloned animals (sea urchins) was created by Hans Dreisch in the late 19th century. His original goal is not cloning an animal but to prove that gemetic material is not lost during cell division. Hans Spearmen was the one who proved what Dreisch is trying to prove. He cloned salamanders which he called a "fantastic experiment."
It was quite a while before someone else made a cloning discovery. In 1951, Robert Briggs cloned a frog. What was interesting was his technique of cloning. He took the embryo out a embryo cell and
placed it in an unfertilized egg cell.
This was when the road started to get rocky. In the start of 1977, there were false hopes. One of the false hopes was a German scientist who shocked the world (like Dolly) but had no proof that he did it, or if it was realy cloned. Two other people from England and America successfully cloned a sheep and a cow's embryo. Unfortunately, they only cloned the embryo, but they were not able to make it grow.
Finally, 1996, in Ian Wilmut from the Roslin Institute in Scotland successfully cloned a sheep after his 277th try. He was like Thomas Edison, except that Edison tried thousands of times. It schocked the whole world like a magnitude 10. The sheep was named Dolly after Dolly Parton, an American singer-song writer.
In 1997, Hondulu Technique cloned Cumulina, the cloned mouse. Technology also improved; the success rate changed from 277:1 to 50:1. The Chinese also also cloned a goldfish.
There are still many years to come. The discoveries of cloning is like geeks solving cipher codes. One day they will solve it, one day. There are still many more to cloning. Opinions and religion against it can start a revolution. Cloning can be useful in many ways. Who knows what will happen next? This will be part of the history of cloning.