WHERE man has led, man’s best friend has followed: a dog has been cloned for the first time, by the team of scientists that first achieved the feat with the embryos of human beings.

The birth of Snuppy, an Afghan hound named after the Seoul National University in South Korea where he was created, promises to advance both human and veterinary medicine by providing a new model species for research into therapeutic cloning.

The success, however, also raises the prospect that dog owners could one day clone their favourite pets. Though the scientists who created Snuppy are opposed to this, and pledged yesterday never to attempt it, their work could help others attempting commercial canine cloning.

An American company, Genetic Savings and Clone, already offers cat lovers the opportunity to clone their pets at a cost of $50,000 (£28,000) a time. Last year it produced the first made-to-order kitten, Little Nicky, for a Texan woman.

It is also engaged in dog cloning research: it was established with the support of John Sperling, a billionaire who has invested millions of dollars in the company’s “Missyplicity Project” to clone his deceased pet, Missy.

Freda Scott-Park, the president-elect of the British Veterinary Association, said that pet cloning was likely to remain ethically questionable for some time, chiefly because of concerns about the health of the animals and the inefficiency of the cloning process.

“No one can deny that techniques that advance our understanding of diseases and their therapy are to be encouraged but cloning of animals raises many ethical and moral issues that have still to be properly debated within the profession,” she said.

Pet owners may also be disappointed by clones of their animals: while Snuppy has the same markings as his father, Tai; the first cloned cat, CC or Copy Cat, looked very different from her mother. There is no guarantee that cloning will produce an animal of similar temperament or personality.

Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh, a member of the team that created Snuppy, said that the nuclear transfer technique used in cloning was no more appropriate for making pets than it is for human reproduction.

“We are not in the business of cloning pets,” he said. “Nuclear transfer is an extraordinary tool for scientific and medical research. It has never been about reproductive medicine or making any members of our family — even our pets.”

While many animals, including sheep, mice, cows, goats, pigs, cats, mules and horses, have been successfully cloned, dogs have proved one of the most challenging species to reproduce in this manner. One of the chief problems is that dog eggs are released earlier than those of most other mammals and are much harder to work with in the laboratory.

The Korean team led by Woo-Suk Hwang, which leads the world in cloning human embryos, has now overcome the technical hurdles. Professor Hwang created the first cloned human embryos last year and, in May, announced the production of 11 batches of stem cells derived from clones of human patients. In the research, published in the journal Nature, cells were taken from the ear of an adult Afghan hound and the genetic material was injected into eggs from which the nucleus had been removed.

Three viable cloned embryos were produced from 123 attempts and implanted into the womb of a female labrador that acted as a surrogate mother. While one miscarried, two puppies were born — Snuppy and his brother, named NT-2 as the second nuclear transfer dog.

NT-2 was born with respiratory problems and died 22 days later after contracting pneumonia. Snuppy remains healthy and has his father’s colouring.

The team now plans to clone further dog embryos from which stem cells can be extracted to learn more about these master cells that can form any type of tissue in the body.

THE SECOND ONES OF THEIR KIND

SHEEP
Dolly, the first mammal in the world to be cloned, was born at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in 1996. Dolly developed arthritis at a young age, however, and died in 2003

COW
Gene, the first cloned bull, was born in 1997 in the United States

CAT
CC, or Copy Cat, was born in 2001, also in America. Little Nicky, the first cat to be cloned commercially, was born last year

MULE
Idaho Gem, the first member of the horse family to be cloned, was born in the United States in 2002

HORSE
Prometea, the first cloned horse, was born in Cremona, Italy, in 2003. Earlier this year, Pieraz-Cryzootech-Stallion became the first horse to be cloned from a champion

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth