What are test tube babies?
Test tube babies are babies that are created in a test tube by taking one sperm cell and one egg cell and combining them. So the baby starts to devolope in the test tube and is then implanted into the mothers uterus.
Test tube babies are also called In Vitro babies. It litteraly means "in glass". A sperm and egg are taken from two seperate donors. The protective shell that exists on the surface of the female egg cell. When this shell is removed, the sperm cell is allowed to fertalize the egg. After fertilization happens, the zygote is allowed to grow for a while in a nutrition solution. This concoction is placed in a test tube, hence test tube baby. After the cell cluster has reached a certain maturity, it is implanted into the surragate mother. This is the most risky part of the process, as the cells have to bond to the Uterus wall. After they have bonded, the process is officialy complete. After a nine month gestation period, a baby is born. Cool, huh? Note: this is not the same as cloning. Cloning is totaly differant
Difference Between a Test Tube and Cloned Baby
A test tube baby is when an egg is removed from a woman and sperm from and man, and the egg is fertilized outside that mother's body, i.e. in a test-tube. Cloning may be carried out in a test tube, but it is the copying or duplicating of cells. If something is cloned, there will be two of them and they will be genetically identical.
- In cloning, there is no sperm cell used in the process. The scientists remove the nucleus of the egg cell and and fertilize it with another nucleus from a growing cell, such as a liver cell. This fusion allows an exact DNA duplicate of the mother organism. A clone does not come out fully-grown like in the science fiction movies. It has to go through the same life stages as the original organism it was copied from. The egg and donor cell are usually taken from the same organism. This allows for an exact copy.
A test tube baby is just an egg fertilized with sperm in vitro. It does not require the nucleus of a cell that is already developed. Once fertilized, it is placed back into the mother, or into a "foster mother" which is a female who carries the fertilized egg in her womb until it is completely developed.