In breakthrough, Korean geneticists clone a dog

A team of South Korean scientists has for the first time successfully cloned dogs, an achievement that marks the 13th mammal that has been cloned since Dolly the sheep was created in 1997 by British geneticists. At a press conference yesterday, Seoul National University researchers Hwang Woo-suk and Lee Byeong-chun said that on April 24, they and a team had cloned a dog. The achievement is scheduled to be published today in the science journal, Nature. In a garden at the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine, Mr. Hwang and his fellow researchers let the cloned puppy, an Afghan hound, run around with the original dog. The surrogate mother, a yellow Labrador, was also on hand. The 100-day-old puppy is named “Snuppy,” for the English initials of the university, SNU, and the word, puppy. The team said it cloned another dog in May, but the animal did not live. "Since cloning a dog is more complicated than cloning a sheep, a horse, a cow or a cat, attempts by scientists from many other countries have failed," Mr. Hwang said. The team used one Afghan for the cloning process. The researchers cloned the dogs by nuclear transfer from adult skin cells into egg cells, or oocytes, that had matured in vivo, or in the womb. Technical difficulties specific to canines create obstacles to creating embryos in vitro, or in a test tube. The team used ear-skin cells from a male Afghan hound, and a total of 1,095 reconstructed canine embryos were transferred into 123 surrogate mother dogs. Three pregnancies were confirmed, and two were carried to term, the team said. Of the two dogs, one died after 22 days from pneumonia. The team began the canine cloning experiment in August 2002. Mr. Lee said the efficiency of cloning dogs is still low compared with rates for cats and horses. He predicted any further progress cloning the species would be difficult. The achievement, however, could provide benefits such as the preservation of rare species and therapeutic cloning, the team said. Scientists will be able to use cloned dogs in stem cell research for incurable diseases instead of primates, Mr. Hwang said. While the scientists said they were not considering making commercial use of the canine cloning technology, experts said the achievement would likely bring drastic changes to the pet industry. Cat cloning is available in the United States at a price of $32,000. Eleven scientists including Mr. Hwang and Mr. Lee as well as Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh worked on the research together. by Park bang-ju