Snuppy's Cloning and Its Impact Explained

Snuppy's cloning was a groundbreaking achievement in the field of genetics. Snuppy, the first cloned dog, was born on April 24, 2005.

Snuppy was cloned using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), a technique that involves transferring the nucleus of an adult cell into an egg cell. This process was pioneered by Dr. Ian Wilmut and his team.

The cloning of Snuppy was a significant milestone in the history of genetic engineering. It marked the first time a dog had been cloned using SCNT.

Snuppy's birth sparked a lot of interest and debate about the ethics of cloning.

Snuppy was the first dog to be cloned, achieved by Woo Suk Hwang in 2005.

After Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996, scientists had been trying to clone a dog but were unsuccessful due to the difficulty of maturing a canine ovum in an artificial environment.

The cloning process involved using tissue from the ear of a 3-year-old Afghan hound.

123 surrogate mothers were used to carry the embryos, with 1,095 being implanted in total.

Only three pregnancies resulted from the procedure, with one miscarriage and the other pup dying of pneumonia three weeks after birth.

The successful clone was carried by a Labrador Retriever.

Snuppy was named as a portmanteau of the initials of the Seoul National University (SNU) and the word "puppy".

The process of cloning Snuppy was a complex and time-consuming task that required constant monitoring.

The eggs in a female canine are only fertile during the estrus phase of the estrous cycle, which lasts for a three-week period each year.

To extract the eggs, scientists had to remove them from the oviduct, a delicate process that demanded close attention.

The nucleus of each egg was replaced with the cell from the ear of the adult dog, and then electrified and fused using a chemical reaction.

The embryos were then transferred to the surrogate dogs, who carried them to term.

Only three of the surrogate mothers became pregnant, and two of them gave birth.

Snuppy's cloning technique was hailed as "extraordinary" by Time Magazine in 2005, but it also raised questions about the ethics of cloning.

The experiment was criticized by Robert Klitzman, who wondered if humans are just a "mass of cells and biological processes?".

Hwang himself criticized the process, stating that it didn't bring science any closer to human cloning and that the low success rate (one in 123) made it unethical to clone family pets.

Ian Wilmut, the scientist behind Dolly the sheep, said that Snuppy's cloning proved that any mammal can be cloned in the right environment and that a global ban on human cloning was needed.

Hwang was later accused of misconduct, including paying for egg donations and falsifying data about his human cloning experiments.

A panel at Seoul National University found that Hwang's research related to Snuppy was accurate, but his previous fabrications raised doubts about the validity of Snuppy.

Hwang was indicted for fraud and dismissed from the university due to his forgeries.

Snuppy's cloning success paved the way for more canine cloning breakthroughs. In 2008, Snuppy became involved in the first known successful breeding between cloned canines, resulting in the birth of 10 puppies.

The SNU team, under the leadership of Byeong Chun Lee, went on to clone over 30 dogs and five wolves.

The first commercial cloning was completed by RNL in August 2008, but the company faced financial trouble in 2013.

The world's first cloned sniffer dogs, all named Toppy, were put to work by South Korean customs in July 2009.

Sooam Biotech, founded by Hwang's supporters, developed proprietary techniques and cloned 700 dogs by 2015.