World's first cloned dog fathers puppies: researchers
World's first cloned dog fathers puppies: researchers
AFP - 2 hours 16 minutes ago
SEOUL (AFP) - - Snuppy, the first cloned dog, has become a father
after the world's first successful breeding involving only cloned
canines, South Korean researchers said Thursday.
The Afghan hound impregnated two cloned bitches of the same breed
through artificial insemination, a Seoul National University (SNU)
the research team said in a statement.
"This is the first time in the world that puppies have been born from
cloned parents," team leader Lee Byung-Chun told AFP.
One of the 10 puppies which were born between May 14 and 18 died but
nine others are healthy, he said.
"This shows the reproductive ability of a cloned dog," Lee said.
Lee's team, which says it also produced the world's first cloned
wolves plans to carry out a similar breeding experiment with them.
The breeding of cloned dogs "opens the way for cloning sniffer dogs
and seeing-eye guide dogs, which usually have to be sterilised for
training and lose the ability to reproduce," Lee said.
Snuppy was created under the stewardship of now-disgraced cloning
expert Hwang Woo-Suk. However, his team's work in creating Snuppy
(Seoul National University puppy) has been verified by SNU and other
authorities.
Hwang was hailed as a national hero until a university inquiry ruled
that some of his work on cloning embryonic human stem cells was fake.
He is now on trial for fraud, embezzlement, ethical breaches and other
charges.
Lee has led his own research team. It earlier announced it had
successfully cloned dogs capable of sniffing out human cancers by
using tissue from a retriever in Japan.