The cloned puppy that glows in the dark

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-27 16:05

Lee Byeong-Chun (C) created the first cloned male dog in 2005 and first cloned female dogs (pictured) in 2006.[Agencies]

Team member CheMyong Ko from the University of Lexington said they could go on to create dogs with human illnesses.

'The next step for us is to generate a true disease model,' he told New Scientist magazine.

However, many scientists have criticised the process saying dogs already serve as models for diseases including some cancers, narcolepsy and blindness.

Nathan Sutter, a geneticist at Cornell University in New York added: 'Transgenesis is laborious, expensive and slow.' Mr Lee's team only had seven successful pregnancies from 344 specially cloned embryos implanted in 20 dogs.

But Mr Lee said some of the five surviving dogs were now producing their own red-glowing puppies. The scientists transferred the fluorescent gene into each dog's egg cell using a retrovirus, but the team was unable to control where the virus inserted the gene.

Despite this, Mr Lee's lab now hope to create dogs who have a specific oestrogen receptor knocked out, which will help them understand how this hormone affects fertility.

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