Xeroxing life

In the next lines i will talk about cloning, clones and the statute of the clone.

What do you know about cloning?
In fact cloning is a word with a lot of meanings in biology, and it has been observed at a wide range of living beings starting with the most simple organisms and ending with humans. I will not explain all of the following terms because it will take me a very long time to do it. So we have: -Vegetative reproduction: at flower plants, fungi and lichens, different types of worms, sponges, coelenterates.
-Parthenogenesis: in various kinds of insects, arthropods, reptiles and fishes (some, not all of them).
-Monozygotic twins.
-Immune system- clonal selection mechanism

But humans introduced new meanings to this word and here are some types of artificial cloning:
-Callus - in plants
-Immortalization- cellular lines
-Induced Parthenogenesis- animals
-Recombinant DAN technology- cloned molecules
-Adult cell cloning- plants, animals...

What is in fact a clone?
A clone should be any organism whose genetic information is identical to that of a "mother organism" from which it was created (this is how wiki says it)...
But will a clone really be identical to his "mother organism"? Well in artificial cloning this is very wrong, as the "mother" can only be the carrier organism. You can clone the father or any other living relative (or not- as in not a relative).
So what is a clone? Then it should be an identical genetic copy of an organism. But nothing living can be 100% identical to anything else, because the environment (either internal or external) induces mutations in different places of the genetic make-up. But a clone is the closest thing possible to the 100% identity.
Humans want to use the artificial cloning to bring back to life extinct animals (like the Tasmanian tiger, or the Mammoth or even the Dinosaurs), or to clone human beings. I must say that the later seems more easy than the first.

Why do i say this ? Well because working with any material from a dead organism is very very hard. At death a lot of complex reactions start to degrade the cells and nucleic acids. Even if the body has been conserved very close to it's death (like freezing for the mammoth or ethanol for the "tiger") the DNA is still broken. In 2008 scientists reported that they managed to restore functionality of a gene Col2A1 enhancer obtained from 100 year-old ethanol-fixed thylacine tissues from museum collections (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002240 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine). But this is only one gene and the specimen is 100 years old, not a few thousands as in the Mammoths case or millions of years as in the Dinosaurs case.
But there is yet another problem. As seen in the case of Dolly and other cloned mice, the new organism will have at it's birth the same age as the donor had. What this means is that the clone will ages faster than it will grow. So if the extinct animal was close to it's natural death, the clone will die even before we'll have the opportunity to see it through it's adult life.And if not, well we'll just be able to see it for a relative short time. And besides that, at our current level of technology, cloning has a very small chance of success. A lot of trials and errors are needed in order to do it once right, and even if you'll succeed once, you'll have to try countless times again for doing it once more.

Even if i said that human cloning seems easier than the cloning of extinct animals, it has a few of more barriers than the first has and most of them are raised by none other than us humans. Most people see a threat in human cloning and because of this research is going very slow. It's an interesting thing to have a fight for a thing that it's not even possible yet. Cloning in general it is, but human cloning has never been proved as possible. For the cloning of each organism are needed particular techniques and protocols that will not work on anything else (the same method used to clone Dolly will not work on mice or humans for example).


(Pic 1 - 5 days old Human normal Blastocyst obtained by IVF http://www.advancedfertility.com/blastocystimages.htm)

(Pics 2-3 - Human Blastocysts in the same stage, but obtained by cloning - French and co., Development of Human Cloned Blastocysts Following Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer with Adult Fibroblasts, Stem Cells, 2008; 26:485– 493)

As you can see there are clear morphological differences between pictures 1 and 2+3. These differences will not lead to the creation of a normal embryo.

Human cloning may be divided into two categories: reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. In many countries of the world reproductive cloning is banned and therapeutic cloning is also looked in for the same reason.

(http://www.ncsl.org/issuesresearch/health/humancloninglaws/tabid/14284/default.aspx
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/3734/RS21517_20030514.pdf)

Why is reproductive cloning banned ? Well mostly because it's not safe yet for both the mother and the future offspring and because of a lot of moral problems. If everyone would have the right to clone humans for reproductive purposes then couples that are unable to make children or have lost their child due to accident or disease, they could have a child this way. But you could ask why don't have a child by In Vitro Fertilization. That would be a very good question as at this point IVF is more exact and has a lot more chances of success than cloning has. But by cloning you could give birth to a sound child (by cloning the healthy parent).
Unfortunately humans are potentially evil creatures and could use human cloning just for organs (this is something a lot of you out there fear off), and a child born for this purpose would have no real life, or they could use human cloning for Eugenics (something that Hitler wanted to do with his Aryans).
Another moral problem regarding the human clone is about it's identity. What will the clone be in relation to the cloned person? If a woman gives birth to her own clone, will she be her sister or her mother? I for one, don't see any problem in here. The child will be that woman's daughter. And you'll say: But she will look just like her mother? Really? And how do you know that? Or better yet when will she look just like her mother ? If that woman would be, let's say 24 years old when she gave birth to her clone, then her daughter will look "just like her" after 18 years ? hmmm then 18 + 24 = 42 in my book ... and an 18 years old girl will never look the same as a 42 years old woman. They will resemble but they will not be identical. Then you'll say that she is identical from a genetic point of view to her mother. Yes that would be true, but what if they are? Will this mater if you know her personally ? Or if you see either one of them on the street (or even both of them at the same time). Think that it will not mater because by cloning you're not able to clone memories, feelings, habits thought processes, or anything related to the brain. Neuronal connections form with each experience, each moment of life. And noone in this world will pass through the same exact experiences in the same order during their life. And neuronal architecture is no embedded in the genetic code. Else monozygotic twins will think the same and from personal experience i can tell you that it doesn't happen like that.
Another problem that will appear with cloning will be that of human instrumentalization (making the human being an instrument).

To be continued ...

1st of December 1918 - 2009

On 1st of December 1918, Romania succeeded in doing something that wanted to do for more than 2000 years. 6 months after the "Armistice Day", Romania was signing it's Great Union. A dream started by the dacians, continued by Mihai Viteazul, was finally sealed with the words spoken by Vasile Goldis: „Adunarea naţională a tuturor românilor din Transilvania, Banat şi Ţara Ungurească, adunaţi prin reprezentanţii lor îndreptăţiţi la Alba Iulia în ziua de 18 noiembrie / 1 decembrie 1918, decretează unirea acelor români şi a tuturor teritoriilor locuite de dânşii cu România. Adunarea proclamă îndeosebi dreptul inalienabil al naţiunii române la întreg Banatul, cuprins între Mureş, Tisa şi Dunăre.”
100000 people listened to these words and cried with happiness because brothers long gone were finally reunited.

Now, 91 years later, many of our countries teens don't even know what happened on that date. It's like they never heard of such an accomplishment and they probably don't care. The same thing happens regarding an event that happened "only" 20 years ago, and re-gave the Romanian people their rights and freedom.

This years parade had a new element, a group of soldiers that entertained us with their mastery in weapon handling and dexterity. But besides this, the event was rather boring with a fade parade of regiments and weaponry. Even so I was impressed with "Mihai Viteazul" Guard Regiment ... the soldiers walked proudly and honor knowing that they are most known regiment in our army.

The 5th state of Matter

We all know the 4 instances in which we can find matter: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. This is a schematic found on Wikipedia's site that represents the relations between these 4 standard and more known states in which matter is found through out the universe. There are some less known stats in which matter resides but they are found only in very low quantities and are man-made (Liquid crystal states, Superconductors and Superfluids).
These states are defined by the position and relative closeness between atoms/ions and electrons.


But i want to talk about a totally different state which matter takes and has been observed exclusively on our planet. I am talking about LIFE. Life is a very interesting phenomenon that can be manifested in an almost infinite number of ways and even if it has been studied since the human mind started to think, it still is one of the notions that doesn't has a clear definition.

When i say "life" what do most of you think about ?


Well this is life as how many of us see it. But why isn't an artificial intelligence some other sort of life manifestation ? Just because man made it ? What is the boundary between living and non-living things ? And more importantly who decides what is alive and what is not. Well the answer to the last question is simple. WE decide that (we as in humans), because we think that we know a lot of things and because it seems that we're the only ones who can make that judgment we do it regardless if it's correct or not.
I like to think that everything that surrounds us is alive in one way or the other. I think that the whole Universe is alive as it's in constant motion and ever changing and evolving. Look at all the stars that die just to give birth to other planets and stars. We are all made from stardust and that is what we'll become after we close our eyes for the last time. If we think as life as the 5th state of mater there there is just a problem of time, till the strings of life will intertwine. Humans have the power to think about their place in the universe for only a few thousand years which represents an infinitely small period of time from an universal point of view. So just because we are unable to see past our own condition that doesn't mean that there is nothing else out there. The robot in the movie "the Bicentennial Man" was more alive than most of us humans.

To be continued ...

There was Light

I have first seen the light of this world not long before Chernobyl gave his first toxic breath, but far enough so that it's effects won't reached me till a few months later, and i really hope that i will give my last breath before the light of a candle and not before the light of an Atomic Spark. I will never know if that big event that happened shortly after i was born has changed anything in my life but i know that many many people have been influenced by it more or less. I had some medical problems around that time and doctors blamed the contaminated vegetables but nothing was certain.

What do you think about upon hearing the word "light"? About God? That's too abstract for now. When that word pops in my mind, i think about everything i have seen during my life: all my pens and pencils, all the people i've seen and met, all the cars/planes/bikes/helicopters i've followed with my eyes, about all the animals and plants i've watched, about all the movies and clips that filled my life with joy or sorrow. Light is more than the manifestation of some electromagnetic energy. Light is the giver of life in our little corner of the universe. Who knows how life would have evolved on this piece of rock without light. We can see a lot of strange creatures in deep caves and oceans, stranger than everything that lives closer to or into the light. I wonder if the human being would have ever evolved.
But as everything in this world, light can be used in 2 ways ... to create or to destroy. Too much of anything is a bad thing for a living being :) , and so exposure to too much light will lead to skin cancers and blindness and eventually death. And a concentrated beam of light can do even more than that. It can destroy a lot harder materials than skin, like steel.

In the beginnig ...

Before creating this "blog" i was full of ideas and excitement, but as soon as i found myself in front of the blank page everything went, well ... blank and lost all my inspiration. But as a Chinese proverb says: "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", i tried to recreate my one thousand "first" step, so here we go...