The perception by humans of what is doable is itself a great determiner of future events. Thus, the successful sheep cloning experiment leading to “Dolly” by Ian Wilmut and associates at Roslin Institute, Midlothian, UK, compels us to look in the mirror and consider the issue of human cloning. Should it occur, and if not, how should that opposing mandate be managed? If human cloning should have...

The instability of recombinant clones accommodating large or full-length viral genomes is frequently a technical challenge in RNA virus research. In an attempt to establish a rapid plasmid-based reverse genetics system that utilizes long RT-PCR technique (LRP), similar difficulty was encountered in the cloning of 9022-bp LRP amplicon. All HCV genotype 1a strains used for LRP cloning showed a re...

Interspecies somatic cell nuclear transfer (iSCNT) is an emerging assisted reproductive technology (ART) for preserving Nature's diversity. The scarcity of oocytes from some species makes utilisation of readily available oocytes inevitable. In the present study, we describe the successful cloning of coyotes (Canis latrans) through iSCNT using oocytes from domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris o...

The fungal pathogen Candida albicans is a common cause of opportunistic infections in humans. We report that wild-type Drosophila melanogaster (OrR) flies are susceptible to virulent C. albicans infections and have established experimental conditions that enable OrR flies to serve as model hosts for studying C. albicans virulence. After injection into the thorax, wild-type C. albicans cells dis...

Secreted aspartyl proteinases (Saps) are important virulence factors of Candida albicans during mucosal and disseminated infections and may also contribute to the induction of an inflammatory host immune response. We used a model of vaginal candidiasis based on reconstituted human vaginal epithelium (RHVE) to study the epithelial cytokine response induced by C. albicans. In order to study the i...

A variety of methods have been developed for cloning PCR products, including blunt-end cloning (1), restriction cut back (2), ligation-independent cloning (3), uracil DNA–glycosylase (UDG) treatment of uracil-containing deoxyoligonucleotide primers (4,5) and TA cloning (6–8). Blunt-end cloning of PCR products often requires treatment of PCR products to polish the ends (9). Even with treatments,...

Movies and science fiction novels for years have depicted ancient and exotic animals resurrected from extinction by mad scientists and out-of-thisworld phenomena. While in actuality we have yet to see any such resurrections, the theoretical results once thought to be science fiction fantasy have come a step closer to reality as powerful technology has been developed which allows the production ...

Cloning is asexual reproduction. That means that an individual can be created without the involvement of any egg and sperm cells. Cloning generates a copy of the cloned organism’s genesunlike sexual reproduction, in which the offspring takes one half of its genes from the egg cell and the other half from the sperm cell. The cloning debate arouses intense emotions, which presumably has to do wit...

The no-cloning theorem of Wootters, Zurek [1] and Dieks [2] shows that it is impossible to devise a means of perfectly replicating an arbitrary, unknown quantum state. While such an ideal cloning machine cannot be constructed, this important result does not prohibit cloning strategies which have a limited degree of success. Numerous interesting contributions have been made to this subject by ma...