In 2005, the team of Woo Suk Hwang managed to clone the first dog – meaning to produce an individual that is genetically identical to another.
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Snuppy with his "father" on the left- the dog with which he shares his DNA. On the right is his surrogate mother – the dog that carried him in her womb, but didn’t contribute to any of his genes. |
Hwang is infamous for faking his reports on allegedly producing human embryonic stem cells – after much investigation it turned out that on of the few reports that weren’t fake was the one about Snuppy, that’s how the afghan hound was named. Snuppy grew up to be a healthy dog and became a father in 2008.
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Snuppy with offspring |
Meanwhile, Byeong-Chun Lee, the scientist who cloned Snuppy with Hwang has extended and improved his cloning technique. Since 2005 he has cloned wolves, beagles among others. He also has produced Ruppy, the first dog carrying artificial DNA – in this case for red fluorescent protein.
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Ruppy with nose, paws claws colored red |
By now the cloning of dogs has become commercially available. In 2009 a couple from Florida had their dead dog cloned by a South Korean biotech company for 150.000$.
