What is Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer?
SCNT is a recent medical breakthrough that provides a way to use a patient’s own cell and a donated, unfertilized human egg to make ES cells in a lab dish that will match the patient’s genetic makeup. These stem cells, or specialized cells made from them, could then be transplanted into the patient’s body to cure a disease or injury by generating healthy new cells and tissues, such as heart, muscle or nerve cells.
Somatic cell nuclear transfer, also called SCNT, is a technique in which the nucleus of a somatic cell (any cell of the body except sperm cells and egg cells) is injected, or transplanted, into an egg, that has had its nucleus removed. If the new egg is then implanted into the womb of an animal, an individual will be born that is a clone. The clone has the identical genetic material as the somatic cell that was transplanted because the nucleus that carries the genetic material.
Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), sometimes known as ‘therapeutic cloning,’ involves transferring a nucleus from a donor cell, such as a skin cell, into an unfertilized egg. The injected egg is then induced to divide, and when it reaches a few hundred cells, the so-called blastocyst stage, it can be used to derive embryonic stem cells that are genetically identical to the original donor. No sperm is involved, and, therefore, no fertilization occurs in this procedure. Moreover, because the blastocyst is not implanted in a uterus, no pregnancy is established. SCNT has great therapeutic promise because the resulting stem cells could be transplanted into the original donor and would be recognized as ‘self’, thereby avoiding the problems of rejection and immunosuppression that occur with transplants from unrelated donors. In addition to providing a source of material for transplantation therapy, SCNT can also be used to make stem cells that carry disease genes. These cells could provide
Related Questions
- Whether you call it therapeutic cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer or nuclear transplantation, it is still cloning isnt it?
- What is the current status of human embryonic stem cell and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) research?
- Is it right to use somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, to produce embryos for research?
