The cloning of pets has become big business in the United States, two famous cases were reported by the world press, Barbra Streisand died in 2018, and Paris Hilton tried to alleviate the pain of her lost pet in 2023. In the United Kingdom, where animal cloning is only allowed for research purposes, and even then only with Home Office permission, the first dogs created in this way have recently been born, around thirty at Gemini Genetics, including Gem, the cocker spaniel. (Its name is ambiguous, on the one hand it means precious stone, but it can also refer to Gemini, generative artificial intelligence.) The company chose a detour, in cooperation with the American company ViaGen. As a result, the British company does not carry out the cloning itself, but is only indirectly involved in the process. He has done this for about 30 animals so far.
Since most dogs and cats are sterilized, when they die, they don’t have any offspring, they don’t have siblings, this is when the possibility of cloning arises, Lucy Morgan, the head of the company, told the Guardian. Cloning is based on a frozen piece of skin from the ear of the animal to be cloned, which contains 100 percent of the donor’s DNA and genome. But a sample can also be taken from the internal organs of a living animal, or from the skin of the neck or chest. This sample is delivered to ViaGen where the cloning process takes place. This is done using the so-called nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology, when a denucleated egg cell is combined with a body cell (in the case of Gem, a skin cell), that is, the nucleus of an adult animal’s body cell is introduced into the denucleated egg cell (DNA). As a result of an electrical impulse, the cell and nucleus are united, the resulting embryo is then implanted in a mother animal, which carries and gives birth to the cloned offspring. This twin will then be returned to the UK, where he will be subject to the same rules as if he had been born naturally. However, the new animals are not one-to-one copies of the originals, and their character can be completely different during their development.
The role of the British company does not seem to be big, but it is all the more important: removing and freezing samples that are very sensitive to speed at -196 degrees Celsius. Samples can be stored indefinitely in liquid nitrogen-cooled shipping containers.
The procedure is not cheap: Gemini takes a sample for 1,600 pounds (780,000 forints) – you have to pay more if they need to store it for a longer period – ViaGen clones a dog or cat for 50,000 dollars (20 million forints), for 85,000 dollars (HUF 33 million) for a horse. It is easier for horse breeders to accept the method in order to maintain the characteristics of the animals, which is primarily a business issue. However, pedigree registration of dogs born in this way is not possible since they do not have a verifiable family tree. According to Lucy Morgan, like the USA, the United Kingdom should also move forward with legislation, cloning can also help preserve endangered species.
Source: nepszava.hu
