Warm Up 9 is due Wednesday, March 24, 2004 at 9:30 am.

QUESTION 1: The Cloning Academy Awards: Can you think of any movies that center around cloning, or are based around DNA in some way? If so, what is the 'take-home message' of that movie?

[Plot Summary: Messing around with DNA = Don't do it!!]
From Shifty-eyed swindler: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. The take home message is that having an evil clone to do your evil-doing is far more shaggadelic than doing it your own groovy self! Even if he's 1/10 your size...Yeah baby , yeah!
From Lydia: "Jurasic Park" = Michael Chreighton; "The Third Twin" = Ken Follett Message: It's cool but dangerous. Or, It's not nice to fool mother nature.
From Mel: A movie that I can think of is "Multiplicity" with Michael Keaton. Its about a busy guy who wanted to clone himself so that he can spend more time with his kids and wife. This movie was very funny, I think that you would really enjoy it. Another movie is "Jurassic Park" Making dinosaurs out of a DNA that were found in prehistoric mosquito. This movie was also pretty cool. Both movies' message at the end was that it was not a good idea to mess with nature and its natural occurance. Just leave nature alone and let it be.
From Goose: Well I know when I think of cloning, Arnold Schwarzenegger and his movie "The Sixth Day" comes to mind. Just like any other clone type movie, the take home message is that it is bad because your clone will try to kill you.
From Moe: I thought of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. In it, an enormous drone army is created from the DNA of Jango Fett. The army has been tweaked just so, creating fighting machines that can be easily controlled by the Jedi or those in charge. As far as this movie is concerned, the clones did manage to their job very effectively. The rescued the remaining Jedi in the colusseum. However, I think that in the third movie, we will probably see the negative side of this clone army, as they transition from Jedi allies to defenders of the Dark Side (Vader).
From wet: THE ONE has Jet Li and he has to fight his CLONE? That cloning process was considered a very bad thing and was not a good move in the movie.
From LeLe: I can't think of the name of this movie but I think Arnold plays in it and he is cloned, actually a lot of people are cloned and regenerated and he mets his other self because he didn't know he was clone and people are trying to kill him and stuff, but there wasn't any real message in the movie, it was an action movie and action movies never really have any real message.
From leishi: The only movie that comes to me is the Santa Clause 2. They clone santa so that the real one can find a wife and they also clone toy soldiers. The clones were not as well defined as the originals. Also the clones were evil.
From kg: Gattaca. It is a movie that centers around DNA. If you have 'good' DNA then you are considered as an above average person and are eligible for certain jobs. If you have 'bad' DNA then you receive the not so pleasant jobs.
From sweetie: I used to watch Guiding Light (the soap opera) and they cloned one of the main characters, Reva. Even though she had not really died, they thought she did and her clone ended up aging so fast that no one really got to experience the real "Reva" until the actual one showed up again. The take-home-message to me would be that no matter what you will never be able to have the same person back no matter what so don't even try.
From morsel: mmm...101 Dalmations. Where did all 101 dalmations come from??

Nominations from Dr. Marrs:

The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum. Man's DNA accidently mixes with fly DNA, with gruesome results. Get the fly swatter!
Sleeper, with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Futuristic (and funny) attempt at cloning a dead leader..

And my favorite for the under 10-set:
Pokemon: The First Movie: Although it seems like just another attempt by Nintendo to get our little ones to Catch 'em All, Pokemon: The First Movie is really a movie about Genetic Determinism. Plot summary: Scientists clone the Pokemon MewTwo from another Pokemon, Mew. MewTwo, angered to find out that he is 'just a clone', begins cloning other Pokemons in revenge. Our heroes Ash Ketcham and Pikachu confront the clones and save the planet. The film ends with the realization that fighting is wrong AND that an organism is more than their genes......MewTwo's ending speech: "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." (snif!)

QUESTION 2: Where do Human Embryonic Stem Cells (hES cells) come from? What are some of the ethical implications of using hES cells for medical research?

From B-rad: They come from the Inner Cell Mass, which is what develops into an embryo. This is why there is controversy about the ethics of this research, because you are basically taking the cells that would become a human, and using them for something else.
From pp: They come from the universal cells that hold great promise for medical research. their goal, is not to clone humans but to advance understanding of the cause and treatment of disease. Patients with diseases like Pakinson's and diabetes have been waiting for the star of so-called therapeutic cloning to make embryonic stem cells that are an exact genetic match of patient. Those cells, patients hope to be turned into replacement tissue to treat or cure their disease without provoking rejection from the body's immune system.
From shell: Human Embryonic Stem Cells come from the blastula's inner cell mass. These come from eggs from In Vitro Fertilization. These are "Fertilized eggs!!!!" - human beings in early developement.
From coffeelovr6: Human embryonic cells are taken from the inner cell mass in the blastocysts. They can be frozen or have the embyronic cells taken. Some ethical issues are the inner cell mass will create a live person if implanted into the uterus, many people believe that destroying these tissues at any stage is murder. Some people believe that if these cells can help other people, an example is an individual with a spinal cord injury, then there is no harm in using the cells.

QUESTION 3: Dolly the sheep is a genetic twin, or clone, of a sheep that was born 6 years earlier than Dolly. Read the material for today. Does Dolly have parents? If so, who were her parents ? (consider genetic, biological, surrogate as terms).

From cas: Dolly's parents, theoretically, are the same as the sheep's parents that she was cloned from. At least that's where the genetic material came from.
From tigger: first of all, the process of clining is much like "asexual reproduction", kinda. there was no mother and father host, just a recreation of something that already existed. so, no , dolly does not have a mother or father. if she did they would be the scientists that "gave birth" ot her. on the other hand, dolly2 WAS created from a sperm and an egg, so might the parents be the sheep who produced the resources for fertilization?. another point is that yes, she had a surrogate mother, a mother that looked after her and took her as her own. that would be the other sheep, the original dolly, who was unaware that dolly2 was a clone.
From jz: Dolly has many parents in a way and none in another. She is the genetic offspring of the two parents who had her genetic twin and also she has a surrogate mother who carried and gave birth to her. But also she wasn't conceivced in a natural way and seems more like she was grown like a plant than a creation of two parents.
From happy: Dolly does have parents because although she is a clone, genetic material has to be donated from someone for the clone to exist. Although she doesn't have parents in the sense that we think of parents, the sheep she was cloned from had parents and Dolly contains that same DNA. So, although it's odd, Dolly does have parents!
From G-Momma: I would have to say that she doesn't really have parents because there was no reproduction involving a male and female sheep. However someone could say that the surrogate was the mother in that she carried it yet in humans that is not the case. Or you could say that Dolly's parents were the same as the parents of the sheep that the cell was taken from. WAY TOO COMPLICATED!!LOL....

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