Skip to main content

For 100,000 bucks, this South Korean biotech firm will clone your dog

for 100000 bucks this south korean biotech firm will clone your dog dogs
Image used with permission by copyright holder
South Korea’s Sooam Biotech opened its doors to its cloning laboratory in 2006 and made headlines a year later with Missy, the world’s first cloning of a companion dog. In the intervening years, the company has ushered in a brave, new world where a dog can live long beyond his death as long as you save some of the canine’s skin cells and have an extra $100,000 to burn.

The technique to clone a dog is surprisingly simple from a theoretical standpoint. DNA from the dog to be cloned is collected from the skin or other live cells. While the cloned DNA is being processed, a donor egg is collected from a female dog and emptied of its DNA by removing the nucleus. The cloned dog’s DNA is injected into the empty egg and fused with the embryonic contents. This embryo is then implanted into a surrogate female dog who carries and delivers the cloned puppy.

Related: This app can help you find your lost dog, or return a lost dog to its owner

Sooam Biotech has been honing its technique for cloning dogs, with one of their latest cloning attempts producing not one, but three cloned puppies. One of the puppies perished from distemper shortly after birth. Two of the other puppies survived, providing happy owners Phillip and Paula Dupont with Ken and Henry, two almost perfect replicas of their cherished dog Melvin.

Cloning may be producing happy pet owners worldwide, but the technique is criticized by animal advocates and medical ethicists alike. Animal supporters point to the high price tag of cloning and question whether that money would be better spent supporting abandoned dogs in shelters, instead of producing designer dogs. Bioethicists also question the surgeries and other medical procedures inflicted on the dogs involved in the cloning process. The cloning process has a high failure rate with multiple attempts often needed to produce a single clone. These detractors, though, don’t deter per owners who want preserve their loving companions. The Duponts already are considering another clone of their beloved dog Melvin, this time the pup will be given to their grandson.

This was originally a post on our brother site, Digital Trends.

Kelly Hodgkins
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Everything points to Apple TV+ making a change you’re not going to like
Is an ad-supported tier coming to Apple TV+?
The Apple TV Plus Logo

It turns out that TV worked pretty well under its old model. According to a new report from Business Insider, Apple TV+ may be the latest streaming service that's set to introduce an ad-supported tier and charge those who don't stream with ads a premium fee to access their great shows and movies.

At this point, the report is still speculation, but Apple has made several recent hires in the advertising space that seem to suggest the direction they're planning to take. The company recently hired former NBCUniversal ad executive Joseph Cady to serve as executive vice president of advanced advertising and partnerships, a move that comes following the company's hiring of another former NBCUniversal executive, Jason Frum, who joined Apple's video ad sales team.

Read more
From Gilda Radner to Ali Wong, these are the best female comedians of all time
These women from all generations will make you laugh out loud
Ai Wong comedian 2017 Moontower comedy festival

Hot take: I don’t care for straight male comedians. It’s not that they’re not funny, they’re just … I don’t know, boring? Maybe that’s reductive of me, but I never seem to leave a straight male comedian’s set feeling particularly inspired. And though some may argue that it’s not important for a set to "inspire" its audience, I’d actually argue that the opposite is true. For me, I want to see a comedian use humor to address real issues and say real things about the world, even if they do it in a completely goofy way.

Therefore, I tend to prefer female and female-identified comedians. They’re sharp, tough, and have often seen shit that makes their comedy feel raw and true. Undoubtedly there are male comedians who do this, too, but to a much lesser degree, in my very humble and very personal opinion.

Read more
12 classic sci-fi books everyone should read
If you love science fiction and reading, these classic sci-fi novels are a must
Man reading a book and drinking coffee

It may feel like we were recently living in a science-fiction dystopia life -- and in some ways, we were -- but that doesn't mean that we should simply avoid an entire genre of writing. Hardly. In fact, this is probably the perfect time to explore classic sci-fi books, to see what the masters have written, and maybe even see if someone predicted anything like this. Many, though, simply ignore sci-fi wholly and completely because of an association with robots, aliens, and the like.

Long story short, if you think you don't like sci-fi, you have never read great books from the genre. But indeed, many such books abound, including a number that has delighted generations of readers going back well over 150 years. In fact, one of the best things about so many sci-fi books is their very timelessness. As by definition, this type of fiction breaks away from the norms of the everyday world -- whether slightly twisting things or taking place on entire other worlds -- the stories often feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were published decades ago.

Read more