Kat is quite correct when
she wrote: “The fact is, a genetic duplicate (which is what a clone
is), is not identical to the original...perhaps not even, necessarily
"genetically" since though the DNA is the same, how that DNA is
expressed in the actual individual is different, including the actual
individual's sex cells.”
While clones do have
duplicate DNA, the environment can – and usually does – impact how
they are expressed. So the clone of a world-class performing horse won’t
necessarily be a world-class performer. Even the color of the clone can
be different. Having said that, however, the chance that the asexually
produced clone will be world-class is much greater than if that horse was
produced sexually and thus has only half its genes from the world-class parent.
This technology is still fairly
new, particularly when it comes to equines. However, in time, I would
expect cloning to become almost as common as in-vitro fertilization. Long
before that, the registries will have come to grips with how to classify and
register cloned “offspring.” There was time, not that long ago,
when in-vitro fertilization was new, exotic and controversial. Many considered
it a violation of nature. The media fed this view by talking about “test-tube
babies.” Now it is so common we hardly notice. It is not hard
to predict that cloning will become the same.
