Q1.
Will it be possible to obtain a complete animal from an animal cell like plants? If yes, what would be the advantages and challenges of this development?
Answer
Partly, yes — but not from an ordinary differentiated body cell in the straightforward way a carrot phloem cell regenerates a carrot.
What is already possible. Every cell of an animal carries the complete genetic information, exactly as a plant cell does. Two routes exist:
- Stem cells. Cells such as those in bone marrow can still divide and give rise to several cell types. This is why bone marrow transplants work for leukaemia and thalassaemia — the transplanted stem cells rebuild the patient's blood.
- Transferring a nucleus. If the nucleus of a body cell is placed into an egg cell whose own nucleus has been removed, the egg's cytoplasm can reprogramme that nucleus so that it behaves like a zygote again. A whole animal can develop from it.
Advantages if this could be done reliably:
- Damaged tissues and organs could be grown and replaced — heart muscle after a heart attack, cartilage in a worn joint, skin after burns.
- An organ grown from the patient's own cells would not be rejected by the body.
- Endangered species could be conserved and highly productive livestock multiplied.
- New medicines could be tested on cultured human tissue instead of on animals.
Challenges:
- Biological. Differentiated animal cells have lost their totipotency; they must be reprogrammed, and the process is inefficient and often fails. An animal cell has no cell wall and depends on precise signals and a blood supply from its neighbours, which a dish cannot reproduce. Uncontrolled division can turn into cancer.
- Practical. An animal body is far more complex than a plant's — many organ systems must develop in the right order and connect correctly.
- Ethical and social. Serious questions arise about consent, about the welfare of animals produced this way, about cost and about who gets access to such treatment.
Why plants find it easy and animals do not: a plant is fixed in one place and cannot run from damage, so it keeps the ability to rebuild any part from ordinary cells throughout its life. An animal can move away from danger and instead invests in a body plan that is fixed early. Totipotency is the price animals pay for that fixed, highly organised body — and reversing it is exactly the frontier this question is pointing you towards.