Question: if you had the cell of an Almost extinct creature could you clone the cell and give the creature another chance to re-populat the earth?

Amelia Markey answered on 14 Jun 2011:

Well cloning is pretty complicated. What you need is the DNA of the animal you want to clone and an egg from a female of the animal you want to clone. You need to empty the egg and then insert the DNA you have from the other cell into that egg then put it back in the female to grow into a baby…phew!

But even then you’d only have one animal if it was successful which isn’t enough to repopulate the species. Even if you cloned a male and a female I probably wouldn’t recommend breeding them as it might not work properly. Clones aren’t quite the same as the real deal.

Another thing is that cloning isn’t very efficient. By that I mean that it usually takes a lot of unsuccessful attempts to produce a healthy clone. So it would be pretty impressive if you got it to work from just one cell.

Yet another issue is ethics. This is something all scientists have to think about. Is it right to do the things we want to do? Is it right to bring this animal back? A lot of people disagree with cloning for various reasons such as religious views. It’s important to consider everyone’s views before you carry such “experiments” out.

Evolution works because some things become extinct and others that are more suited to survive carry on. Small changes over time allow plants, animals even bacteria to become better suited to their environment. Although this creature might become extinct it might leave room for other creatures to inhabit this environment.

It’s a bit of a complicated issue and I hope I’ve covered it as best as I can. If you need more explanation please add a comment and I’ll try to answer it better 🙂