I think it was Abraham Lincoln who once said that if you call a sheep's tail a leg, it still is a tail! Same thing here. When you remove the genetic material from an oocyte and replace it with the genetic material from a somatic cell, that IS CLONING. People have given it all kinds of names, in order to make it sound "good", but it is still cloning.
the oocyte becomes an embryo without fertilization by another gamete, a sperm
Exactly! That's what cloning is all about! Reproduction without fertilization.
the centromeres that allow the chromosomes to line up properly and regulate the division of the cell are found in the sperm
Really? Where did you learn that? And I have been teaching my students that a centromere is part of any chromosome! Seriously, if you could back up that statement you would probably qualify for the next Nobel prize in Medicine. But if you can't, you'd better stop trying to mislead people by using "big words".
I'm not familiar with the mouse experiments that you refer to. If you can give me a reference more reliable than Newscientist I'll be glad to have a look at it.
I’m not trying to mislead anyone. (???)
Interestingly enough, the New Scientist article references the Nature report.
Nature (vol 428, p 860)
But, here’s the link,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6985/abs/nature02402.html
You’d better read the report from the original post:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/clo.2007.0033
There’s no SCNT in this technique. No one’s removing anything from the oocyte.
I don’t believe that parthenogenesis is technically “cloning.” The nuclear material comes from the donor, but it’s not a complete set, it’s not a copy of the donor.
And, I should have said “centrosome,” not centromere, but there’s evidence supporting the idea that the sperm contributes that first organization of the chromosomes, leads to the development of the microtubules, and eventually to the position of centromeres,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16467269&dopt=Abstract
http://ror.reproduction-online.org/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/19
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8711211&dopt=Abstract