| MadSci Network: Genetics |
The short answer is no, they will probably not be identical. The cousins would be more closely related than most cousins since their mothers and fathers are genetically identical. So while the cousins would probably not be identical they would be as closely related genetically as brothers and sisters (that is, children who share the same parents, since genetically their parents are interchangable). Remember we each have two copies of each of our genes, one from mom and one from dad. These two copies are called alleles. Identical twins each have the same two alleles for each gene but they too got one from mom and one from dad so the two alleles for any one gene might not be identical to each other. Now if identical twins marry identical twins each of their children will get one allele from mom and one from dad but there is only a 50/50 chance of two children getting the same allele of any given gene. Since this would be true for each gene it would be very unlikely that any two offspring would get exactly the same set of all the genes. For the offspring of two set of identical twins, the parents are essentially interchangable but the moms have one genetic makeup and the dads another. The offspring of either family would share from the same pool of genes and so the cousins would be as closely related as brothers and sisters but not identical. Cloning,on the other hand, occurs when the entire genetic makeup of one individual is used to create another. In this case there is no recombination of alleles and the donor and the offspring share all of their alleles for every gene (they are genetically identical, like identical twins).
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Genetics.