Pet dog to be cloned by Korean biotech

Written byBob Grant

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A South Korean biotech company has announced it will, for the first time ever, commercially clone a pet dog, according to linkurl:reports;http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2008/02/133_18963.html coming out of the country. RNL Bio said last week that it received an order from Californian Bernann McKunney, to clone her deceased pet pitbull, Booger, to the tune of $150,000. Booger died in 2005, but not before McKinney had tissue from his ear preserved. The Korean company told the linkurl:BBC;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7246380.stm that the cloning will take place at Seoul National University (SNU), where the first dog, Afghan hound Snuppy, was successfully cloned as a proof of concept in 2005. The SNU team that will recreate Booger is headed by Lee Byeong-chun, who was a colleague of linkurl:Hwang Woo-suk,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22933/ the disgraced Korean stem cell scientist who admitted fabricating data on human embryonic stem cell lines in 2006. Hwang's dog cloning work, however, was determined to be legitimate, and the SNU team went on, after Hwang's departure from the university, to successfully clone linkurl:wolves.;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53172/ Apparently, McKunney was so attached to Booger because the loyal dog once saved her life after another dog bit her arm off. Commercial pet cloning is not exactly a new phenomenon. In 2004, San Francisco-based company Genetic Savings and Clone became the first company to linkurl:clone;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15228/ a cat for a customer, who shelled out $50,000 for the pet. Avoiding any of the linkurl:troubles;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54020/ faced by other hopeful owners of bioengineered pets, McKunney will reportedly pay RNL Bio's fee only when she has her cloned companion in hand.

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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