Epigenetics

As explained in the post About cloning..., when we talked about "surrounding DNA stuff", we were talking about epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms in the underlying DNA sequence, some of which are inheritable. In other words, we do not depend only on our genetic code plus the environment to be as we are, we have our "genetic environment" inside that makes us different.

Differentiation process. Picture from www.systembio.com

About cloning...

I am sure that all of you have heard about cloning before. Despite of being a scientific invention or discovery, it has existed from long time ago in nature. It is also called asexual reproduction. It happens, for example, in bacteria. But it also happens in higher animals. 

Example of fragmentation in a starfish. Picture from blocs.xtec.cat

Cloning is an identical copy of an individual, organism or cell that already exists. 

But coming back to more human concepts, cloning has been one of the most interesting issues in science since the discovery of the DNA. The idea of creating a new individual with exactly the same genome as another... it almost means immortality. But we can discuss about philosophical meanings later.

Picture from www.neatoshop.com