By SANDY ROSE
THE loss of a pet is something many pet owners dread, but recently companies have been offering to clone man’s best friend – for a price.
When did it start?
BioArts Chief Executive, Lou Hawthorne, first began investigating pet cloning in 1997, hoping to clone his family dog, Missy. This project became known as the Missyplicity Project. This project was originally based in Texas A&M University, and later taken over by Genetic Savings & Clone (GSC), and finally by BioArts International.
However the cloning of Missy was put on hold when it was realised that cats were much easier to clone than dogs. On December 22nd 2001 the Missyplicity project expanded to include CC, the world’s first cloned cat.
Eventually in December 2007 BioArts International succeeded in cloning Missy, four times. With this success they announced they were auctioning five dog cloning spots in 2008.
Last month (September) BioArts announced they had successfully delivered the five cloned pets to their owners; however they were no longer going to be able to offer commercial pet cloning services. Hawthorne largely blamed competitor RNL Bio for forcing them out of what he saw as a niche market.
Hawthorne says, “Our plans to provide dog cloning services to a small but high-end niche market were interrupted in February, 2008 when a South Korean biotech company named RNL Bio announced plans to clone a dog named “Booger” for $150,000, implying their intent to engage in the black market cloning of dogs. We view RNL as a black market cloning company because we possess a license to clone dogs from the owners of the “Dolly ” patents, whereas RNL does not.”
RNL Bio is a biotechnology company in Korea focused on stem cell therapeutics and life sciences technologies. They say they obtained the exclusive license for dog cloning from Seoul National University (SNU), and that when BioArts auctioned their dog cloning services, they were in fact breaching copyright .
In June 2008 RNL Bio cloned a dog for the first time. Marine, a Japanese cancer-sniffing dog was successfully cloned four times.
In December 2008 RNL Bio produced the world’s first ever commercially cloned dog, Boogers. The beloved Pit-bull terrier was cloned five times for £25,000 (UK).
Since then RNL Bio has successfully cloned several more dogs.
How does it work?
There are several different cloning methods. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is the method used to clone Dolly and is where cells are taken from an animal (donor) and then the nucleus of the donor cell is taken out. A nucleus from another egg cell is then removed and the nucleus from the original cell put in its place. The egg is then exposed to various stimuli which activate the embryo and cause it to replicate at much the same rate it would if it had been fertilised by sperm naturally. After about five days the cell division reaches the stage where it can be implanted into a surrogate mother. This process is not always successful, Dolly was the only lamb born from 277 attempts.
Genetic Savings and Clone used the method of chromatin transfer. It is basically the same as SCNT with a few changes. A problem with SCNT is that the nucleus of the donor cell is from an adult and no longer has the proteins and hormones needed for a growing embryo. Chromatin transfer removes certain molecules from the donor cell before the procedure in order to reduce the tendency of these cells not to produce these proteins and hormones.
What are the advantages?
The main benefit for commercial pet cloning is that owners are able to resurrect their beloved pets, which may help ease the pain of their passing. It is also hoped that cloning technology can be applied to prize stock such as horses and camels, in order to increase breeding stock and raise new champions.
On a wider scale, animal cloning may help boost the populations of endangered species, and even bring back some that are extinct.
What are the disadvantages?
According to NoPetCloning.org, cloning household pets can be incredibly cruel. Unintended side effects of cloning can include abnormalities, pathologies and in most cases death, which they believe can occur up to 97% of the time.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) warns pet owners to approach cloning with caution. A cloned animal may not necessarily look or act like the original. A pet’s behaviour is learnt from their experiences and the conditions they were raised in, not their DNA.
A report released by the HSUS and American Anti-Vivisection Society says that 99% of cloning attempts published in scientific journals fail to produce a healthy clone. In these studies, 3,656 genetically manipulated embryos were created and more than 530 dogs and cats were used to clone just 11 cats and five dogs that survived for more than 30 days.
Where is this heading?
RNL Bio continues to produce cloned pets, for those owners with enough cash to buy them.
Cloning technology can be adapted in many ways. Many horse breeders hope that cloning can be used to produce stallions from the DNA of top-performing geldings and to produce copies of popular stallions in order for their owners to produce more semen, embryos and offspring.
It is also hoped that the technology will help in stem cell research, as well as in helping to regenerate endangered species.
The conception many people have of pet cloning is very similar to the ‘RePet’ services in the movie ‘6th Day’, where pet clones are produced fully grown and with the same behaviours and memories as the previous pet, but this is far from the truth. However, biotechnology research centres around the world are continuing to work on cloning technologies and some hope that one day pet cloning will become an affordable reality for many pet owners.
