British couple gets cloned puppy with help of South Korean Lab

Laura Jacques and Richard Remde, a British couple, have become the proud owners of a cloned puppy that has been brought to existence from the DNA of their former dog that had died.

The cloned puppy, named Chance, is the first puppy produced with samples taken from a dog that had been dead for a couple of weeks. Previously, cloned puppies were produced using samples from living or recently dead dogs.

The Yorkshire couple said they paid $A137, 648 to clone their former dog Dylan, who died of heart attack around six months ago after being diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumor. The dog was just 8 years old.

As the couple had heard of dog cloning from a documentary, 43-year-old Remde traveled to South Korean lab Sooam with samples of their dead dog’s DNA in hopes of getting an exact replica of their dog.

The first sample failed, but Remde was not ready to miss any chance. So he flew back to South Korea again with a biopsy from Dylan’s abdomen. By this time, the dog had been dead for twelve days. The Korean lab, which has already produced nearly 700 cloned dogs, succeeded in producing a cloned puppy in the second attempt.

David Kim, a scientist at Sooam, told reporters, “This is the first case we have had where cells have been taken from a dead dog after a very long time. Hopefully it will allow us to extend the time after death that we can take cells for cloning.”

Scientists clone a dog by taking a tissue sample from the abdomen or cheek, and convert it into a culture with the animal’s DNA. Then, it is injected into unfertilized eggs taken from a surrogate dog. After the embryo is ready, it is planted into the surrogate animal, and a cloned litter arrives nine weeks later.