Pet Cloning

[Caius]

Dog Cloning

Cloning
Provided by: Kerry Gold, Pets Editorial Team
A German Shepherd rescue dog used at the New York World Trade Center -9-11 site has won the distinction of being replicated.

Trakr the rescue dog proved to be such a hero that his owner James Symington of Los Angeles was chosen by BioArts International as the recipient of an expensive dog-cloning procedure. Trakr was chosen as most "clone-worthy" canine in a competition held by the California-based cloning firm.

Pet cloning is growing in popularity when it comes to replicating a beloved or special pet, but cloning of pets is nothing new. A Bay Area company in California (that is now out of business) cloned the first cat in 2001, for $32,000 U.S. In 2005, the first dog — an Afghan hound named Snuppy — was cloned by a Seoul National University lab in South Korea. That same lab, led by Professor Lee Byeong-Chung, has recently cloned a American woman's beloved pitbull terrier named Booger. Booger died in 2006, but DNA from the dog was used to clone pups that were born in July.

In Booger's case, three clones were conceived in two surrogate mother dogs. The company, RNL Bio, charged $150,000 U.S. to clone Booger, but later reduced the price to $50,000 U.S. because it was considered the world's inaugural commercial cloning.

"[Booger] was my partner, my pal, my friend," owner Bernann McKinney told a reporter. "We had 10 years together."

Booger saved McKinney's life when he chased away a vicious mastiff which had attacked her. Booger's DNA was taken from some of his ear tissue, which had been refrigerated.

As for Trakr, his DNA has been sent to a South Korean lab called Sooam Biotech Research. Trakr and Symington were some of the first rescuers to arrive at Ground Zero after the attacks, and they uncovered the last human survivor buried deep under approximately 30 feet of debris.

But 15-year-old Trakr developed a neurological disorder that is believed to be linked to his exposure to toxic fumes at the World Trade Center site, causing paralysis of his hind legs. It's a degenerative condition also caused by simple genetics, however, since some dog breeds are simply susceptible to the disorder.

But will the dog that comes back to Symington be an exact replica of his beloved Trakr?

Not necessarily.
He may look a lot like Trakr, say geneticists, but he probably won't act like him. It turns out that it takes more than DNA to replicate a dog. It takes the same memories and experience, which means that at the end of the day, there's just one Trakr.

I found this to be pretty interesting. And after having gotten my own puppy not to long ago, I can see how some owners get attached to their pets ie the dog booger. But to pay that much money for a dog that is just going to look like the original, is mind boggling. In all honesty.

[Edi]

It has its own problems, namely that the biological age of the clone is the same as the biological age of the original at the time of sampling, which leads to premature aging and all sorts of other problems. At least it used to, but I have no idea of the specifics of the processes or the details of cellular biology, so I can't say much and nothing with any authority.

[Jaevric]

Strikes me as creepy, but whenever I've lost a pet I've made a conscious effort to get a pet that didn't resemble its predecessor to avoid making comparisons.

Having an exact physical duplicate that didn't behave the same as the original would be weird.

[Mayabird]

On the one hand, I can understand cloning prize animals with special traits that are probably genetically linked such as champion milk cows, for instance, or dogs that have especially sensitive noses. I can also understand sentimentality. Heck, I can also understand cloning animals now to be able to eventually improve cloning techniques and eliminate the issues we currently have with it.

But on the other hand, that's a lot of money to produce a pet that won't live as long and won't be the same animal, basically just an older twin. There are lots of great but lonely animals that need adopting, and that money could go to much more, dare I say it, useful causes. $50,000 could feed a lot of animals for the Humane Society.

[RedImperator]

There was an episode of the This American Life TV show on Showtime, where a farmer in Texas had become attached to a prize bull who, very unusually for a bull, had a sweet, affectionate nature and followed the farmer around like a giant dog. After the bull died, the couple had him cloned in an experimental program down at the University of Texas (where, as Maya suggested, they're trying to develop techniques to clone livestock with particularly desirable traits). Well, the cloning was successful, the new bull was born, grew up, hit puberty--and turned into a foul tempered, 1000lb goring machine on a hair trigger. Animals are like people in that sense; genetics isn't the sole determiner of personality by far. People might be dropping tens of thousands of dollars to bring Rex back from the dead, and wind up with a pet that looks like Rex but acts like a totally different animal. For all that, you could have just adopted an animal of the same breed and pocketed the rest of the money.

[Darth Yoshi]

It has its own problems, namely that the biological age of the clone is the same as the biological age of the original at the time of sampling, which leads to premature aging and all sorts of other problems. At least it used to, but I have no idea of the specifics of the processes or the details of cellular biology, so I can't say much and nothing with any authority.

Most likely, if scientists had found a way around the clone's genetic degradation, there'd be fountain-of-youth-type products flooding the market.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

On the one hand, I can understand cloning prize animals with special traits that are probably genetically linked such as champion milk cows, for instance, or dogs that have especially sensitive noses. I can also understand sentimentality. Heck, I can also understand cloning animals now to be able to eventually improve cloning techniques and eliminate the issues we currently have with it.

But on the other hand, that's a lot of money to produce a pet that won't live as long and won't be the same animal, basically just an older twin. There are lots of great but lonely animals that need adopting, and that money could go to much more, dare I say it, useful causes. $50,000 could feed a lot of animals for the Humane Society.

If we routinely took biological samples of animals when they were conceived, the age problem would be dealt with rather neatly. We could just go back through the files and select the tissue of the animals which had the best traits and then clone tens of thousands of them which would have perfectly normal and full lifespans.

[Crayz9000]

If we routinely took biological samples of animals when they were conceived, the age problem would be dealt with rather neatly. We could just go back through the files and select the tissue of the animals which had the best traits and then clone tens of thousands of them which would have perfectly normal and full lifespans.

... Until they get exposed to some random disease, which they all happen to be genetically vulnerable to. Not that we haven't seen this already in very inbred breeds of dogs.

Diversity is always good, but I suppose mass-produced Fidos have a niche.

[Adrian Laguna]

It has its own problems, namely that the biological age of the clone is the same as the biological age of the original at the time of sampling, which leads to premature aging and all sorts of other problems.

Oh wow, so the accelerating ageing of the L'enfants Terribles in the Metal Gear Solid series is real? I thought that was just something Kojima made-up because it fit his story, it's pretty cool that's an actual phenomenon.

[Erik von Nein]

Errr, well, it's real, yeah, but it doesn't happen the same way it does in those games. Exaggerated for dramatic effect, and all.

Apparently they've made inroads into the whole telemer problem (the hyper-aging issue) and can apparently make clones without the same problems that affected Dolly the sheep, so that's not really a concern anymore.