Question Video: Recalling Which Cell is Enucleated in Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer Biology • Third Year of Secondary School

Video Transcript

Somatic cell nuclear transfer, renucleation, is a laboratory strategy used for creating a viable embryo. Below is a simple outline of the process. Step one: remove the nucleus from blank cell. Step 2: implant the nucleus from any diploid cell in this enucleated cell to get a viable embryo. Which of the following can fill the blank in step one to explain where the enucleated cell comes from? (A) An egg, (B) a sperm, (C) a donor somatic, (D) a fetal.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer is a method of cloning. So suppose we have two sheep and we want to clone the one represented in orange. To perform somatic cell nuclear transfer, we first need to remove the nucleus from one of the orange sheep’s somatic, or body, cells. Next, we extract an egg cell from the pink sheep and then remove the nucleus. This is now an enucleated egg cell. Next, the nucleus from the orange sheep is combined with the enucleated egg cell from the pink sheep. This is now effectively an embryo that contains the genetic information of the orange sheep. This embryo can then develop into a clone of the orange sheep.

Therefore, where the enucleated cell comes from is given by answer choice (A), an egg.