Question: When a sperm and an ovum fuses to be placed in the womb of a surrogate mother can the sperm fertilize two female eggs to produce two clons

Cheryl Andisi answered on 20 Jan 2017:

In meiosis, or the formation of the sperm and the ova, there is formation of cells with only half of the genetic material required to make an offspring. Fertilisation is defined as the fusion of a sperm to an egg and this is complete after the fusion of the nucleus from the sperm to that of an egg thereby restoring the full amount of genetic material required by the offspring. Therefore, only one sperm can fertilise one egg and once the fusion of the nuclei occurs, the egg will undergo changes to prevent any other sperm from penetrating the egg cell, such as change of electrical current or formation of a hard layer. The main reason for this is so as to avoid genetic abnormalities that might result eg ending up with a fetus with 3N genome.
Did you know that the only part of the sperm that fuses with the egg is its nucleus? This means that apart from the nuclear information, all the other organelles, nutrition etc is provided by the ova. For that reason, all your mitochondria are inherited from your mother and maternal lineages can thus be tested using mitochondrial DNA.

Clonning, in this context can only happen after fertilisation is complete and cell division begins. Each cell division after fertilisation produces identical cells which can be referred to as clones. Identical twins are thought to be formed in this way