A couple, Laura Jacques and Richard Remede from West Yorkshire, England have cloned their pet dog named Dylan, after its death, for which they spent $100,000.
The 8-year-old Dylan, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in June and given about a year to live, Jacques was shattered by its death.
Jacques, who could not take this, said, “I fell in love with him from day one. Within 19 days of the diagnosis, he was gone, I was still in denial about the fact that he was even going to die in the near future.”
The couple packed up some samples of Dylan’s tissue and flew to Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in South Korea.
Sooam Biotech has an experience of cloning the highly trained rescue and police dogs for the South Korean government and also a number of pets in the US. Till date, the lab successfully cloned 700 dogs. Sooam Biotech charges $100,000 for a pup.
Sooam takes the donor eggs and pulls the genetic material out of them, for cloning the dogs.
Cells cultivated from the donor dog are slipped inside, and the whole thing is zapped with electricity to encourage everything to fuse. If it works well, the egg starts growing like it is fertilized and becomes an embryo, but the genetic material is completely provided by the donor dog, but not the egg donor.
The same process took place, when Laura Jacques and Richard Remede approached Sooam and the couple were delighted, after the pregnancies were confirmed in two bithes, using the eggs carrying Dylan’s DNA.
Dylan clone was born by caesarean section on 26th December, and the second clone was born on the immediate day.
The dogs absolutely had the same features, as Dylan had. The couple named them as Chance and Shadow.
Jacques said. ” We are so happy, it went really well. Even when the puppy was just a few minutes old, I couldn’t believe how much he looked like Dylan. All the colorings and patterns on his body are in exactly the same places as Dylan had them.”
The emotional Jacques further added that, Dylan never had the chance to have father. The puppies are a piece of him, and a reminder, but not a replacement.
By Phani Ch
