• Question: • If you could make a full clone; not a robotic one, a living breathing clone; would it have the same nerve structure as a regular human being, or would the synthesized rubber bone structure be more advanced and allow them to be obese? And would it be possible for them to become obese?

    Asked by ChellPortal to Andy, Duane, Giovanna, Katie, Theresia on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Duane Mellor

      Duane Mellor answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      If it were a clone then it should have all the same bone, nerves etc as the original person. If they consumed more energy than they used, then they would become obese.

      It is possible if they were living in a different environment when fully grown or during the cloning process some of their genes would be switched on or off in different ways to the original person (something called epigentics), this may increase or decrease their risk of becoming obese

    • Photo: Andrew Philp

      Andrew Philp answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      I guess the main idea of cloning something is that it is an exact replica. So everything in the clone would behave and act the same as the original. Engineering the clone to be different in someway would allow you to test if the modification you made could alter the development of the clone. This is kind of the work that takes place in mouse genetic models. The researcher alters the amount of a gene in a certain tissue and then examines the consequence of this alteration. Or they might mutate a gene to alter its function and again look at the outcome. There are a number of mouse models in which a single gene alteration leads to obesity, or deletion protects the mouse from high fat diets.

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