“Snuppy is a Cloned Dog”

“Snuppy is a cloned dog.”

“Nature,” a British science journal, posted in its online edition on March 9 the two research papers concluding that Snuppy, the cloned dog made by Hwang Woo-suk and his research team at Seoul National University (SNU) is a “100 percent” cloned dog after re-verifying Hwang’s work.

The research papers were written by Dr. Elaine Ostrander and his team at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the SNU Investigation Committee, respectively, both of whom were requested to do so by Nature.

Nature publicized the achievement of Hwang and his team’s successful birth of the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy, on August 4 last year. But later, when their manipulated paper on stem cells led to suspicions about Snuppy, it started the re-verification process on Snuppy at the end of last year.

Nature obtained the blood samples of three dogs, namely, Snuppy, Tai, whose body cells were used for Snuppy, and a surrogate mother from Hwang’s team, and requested Ostrander’s team conduct the investigation.

Ostrander’s team said, “The result of tests on Snuppy and Tai’s blood cells show the genes of their nuclei do match. The mitochondria genes that are only transmitted via the maternal line didn’t match. Snuppy is a cloned dog.”

Nature also requested the SNU Investigation Committee submit its research findings in the form of a thesis in early February. The committee said on January 10, “The report on the research findings related to Hwang’s research scandal revealed Snuppy is a cloned dog.”

The SNU Investigation Committee obtained and compared the genes of organ samples that provided eggs as well as blood samples. As a result, they submitted the identical results of Ostrander’s team. They also revealed the mitochondria genes of Snuppy and the dog that provided eggs were exactly identical.

wolfkim@donga.com