Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

The science of cloning has had a very long natural history that many do not recognize. “The word 'clone' comes from the Greek klwn, meaning twig, and there is a very good reason for this. For example, every chrysanthemum plant you buy at a Garden Center is a clone of some distant and probably long dead chrysanthemum which once supplied a side-shoot for rooting. Likewise, whenever you divide an overgrown shrub or successfully cultivate a houseplant cutting you are cloning. In each case you are deliberately propagating a copy of the parent, and eventually over successive years and many hours in the greenhouse, producing a multitude of plants (clones) all genetically identical to the prized parent. Elm trees and other suckering plants clone themselves naturally, sending out subterranean roots from which new plants, of identical genetic constitution, will sprout”(Cloning). According to the World Book Encyclopedia, “A clone is a group of organisms that are genetically identical. Most clones result from asexual reproduction, a process in which a new organism develops from only one parent. Except for rare spontaneous mutations, organisms that are asexually reproduced have exactly the same genetic composition as their parent. T