A couple Laura Jacques and Richard Remede from West Yorkshire, England have cloned their dog after its death. They spent £67,000 for their beloved boxer Dylan.
Dylan an 8-year-old was diagnosed with a brain tumor in June and given about a year to live, Jacques was shattered by its death. She said “I fell in love with him from day one.” She added “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 Reserch Foundation in South Korean.
Sooam Biotech charged $100,000 for a pup. The lab has cloned highly trained rescue and police dogs for the South Korean government as well as a number of highly prized pets in the US. About 700 dogs has been cloned till date.
Sooam clones puppies by taking donor eggs and pulling the genetic material out of them. Then, 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, the egg starts growing like it’s fertilized and becomes an embryo – but the genetic material is 100 percent provided by the donor dog, not the egg donor.
The couple were delighted when pregnancies were confirmed in two bitches using eggs carrying Dylan’s DNA.
On 26 Dec, Dylan clone was born by caesarean section and the second clone followed the next day. The dogs has the exact same genetic make-up as Dylan had. They 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 colourings and patterns on his body are in exactly the same places as Dylan had them.”
Dylan never had the chance to father. The puppies are a piece of him, and a reminder but not a replacement, said Jacques.