How much organic matter is required to make a clone?

Question

The premise of my story is somewhat similar to Jurassic Park in that a creature needs to be replicated from very little remaining organic matter.

In this case, though, the relevant material is not found in fossilized bugs but from a recently deceased specimen. Is there any issue with the amount of matter or is a handful of cells enough?

Assume that nothing damaged the DNA of the specimen. Essentially the prospective cloners came across the creature after having been fed on by scavengers leaving very little left.

Note: the cloning technology in question is alien so there is some leeway if necessary

Answer 1

There are a few things that you'd need to be able to clone a creature.

One thing is a sample of intact DNA. If stem cells can be acquired to get it this would be better, as mature cells are specialized, and specialized cells often have trouble remembering how to turn into the many other cell types of a whole organism.

There are ways to turn some types of cells into stem cells that were not available in 2005 when that article was written.

The other thing you need is an unfertilized egg, and a compatible womb to put it in. Now, if the creature was female and very fresh, it might be possible to harvest some of her eggs to be used to grow her own clone.

Combine a lot of these clone eggs with an array of artificial wombs, and you'd probably be in business.

Answer 2

In theory with line replication you can go from a few cells to as much as you need, the issue being that you'll need to make alterations to the cell DNA in order to clone up enough of them to make a creature. Otherwise the cells will die faster than they reproduce and stop reproducing after a certain number of iterations. If you have the manipulation technology available to you and can get a sample of stem-cells to clone from you could build a new creature with a very small cell sample indeed.