How much do you love your dog? A California-based biotech startup is banking that for some pet owners the bond they share with their dog is worth a $100,000 bid on the chance to clone it. According to ABCNews, BioArts International will host a series of online auctions in June, engineering genetic copies of the top five bidders’ furry friends.
Copying Missy
Throughout the 1990s, BioArts International CEO Lou Hawthorne planned to clone his dog Missy, a border collie-husky mix. Although Missy died in 2002 at the age of fifteen, Hawthorne had taken genetic samples from her by swabbing her cheek and abdomen. Now, Hawthorne claims to have produced three Missy clones — marking the second time a dog has been successfully cloned, and the first by a US-based company. Recent tests run by the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis confirm that the puppies are indeed genetic copies of Missy.
The difficult cloning process
Dog cloning is not an easy. In fact, the process is more complicated than cloning human beings. That’s because dogs only produce viable eggs when they’re in heat, which happens just twice a year. Even then, scientists have about an hour to extract usable eggs from a dog’s fallopian tubes. According to Lou Hawthorne, only sophisticated blood testing can determine when the time is right to remove a dog’s eggs. Then, the process of inserting the donor dog’s DNA into an enucleated egg cell — one that is stripped of its nucleus — can begin.
Learn more about the process of cloning embryos in this slideshow at NOVA online.
Cloning controversy
Reaction to the news of Missy’s clones and the upcoming auction have been mixed. While some welcome the process as a way to preserve relationships with family pets, critics contend that cloning more complicated animals like dogs brings us one step closer to genetically engineering humans.
Others, like Center for Genetics and Society ethicist Marcy Darnovsky, worry about the animals themselves. “I think the key concern with the cloned dog is that we are not seeing all the puppies that didn’t make it,” Ms. Darnovksy told ABCNews.
What would you do?
Cloning is an impressive technology — kudos to the scientists who have developed and refined it. I feel lucky to have the option to clone a dog… now if only I had a really exceptional dog and enough money to afford it!