A Chinese businessman is celebrating the arrival of his new pet - the country’s first ever cloned cat. Beloved British shorthair, Garlic, was resurrected by heartbroken owner to have a carbon copy made of his former best friend forever.
Who would clone their cat?
A quick poll around your pet-loving pals might suggest more than you think, but 22-year-old Huang Yu from Beijing would, and definitely did.
Bereft after the death of Garlic, Mr Huang, buried his cat in a park but dug the dead cat up after remembering reading about dog cloning before storing his wee pal in the fridge.
Is Garlic mark II exactly the same as the original?
Mr Huang reckons the cats are a 90 per cent match, which is pretty close to perfect, wouldn’t you say?
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How much does it cost to clone your pet?
A mere snip at around £28,000. That was how much Mr Huang paid out to pet-cloning company, Sinogene. Seven months later his new buddy was brought into being and hailed in China as the first cat ever to be cloned.
The company has cloned more than 40 dogs as pets and for medical research - which really is almost too horrendous to think too much about.
How do you clone an animal?
First off, don’t, whatever you do, try this at home. In reproductive cloning, researchers remove a mature cell, such as a skin cell, from the animal they want to copy. They then transfer the DNA of the donor animal's cell into an egg cell that has had its own DNA-containing nucleus removed.
The egg is allowed to develop into an early-stage embryo in a test-tube and then implanted into the womb of an adult female animal surrogate.
The cloned animal has the same genomic sequence information as the somatic cell-derived individual
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Is cloning ethical?
As Scotland knows, the cloning of animals is not without its moral and legal wrangles. Remember Dolly?
The first mammal ever to be cloned from another’s body cell, Dolly was placed under the spotlight in 1996. Dolly’s death, like her life, was controversial. The six year old sheep was euthanised due to a progressive lung disease and severe arthritis. Her short life raised questions over the ethics of cloning and the long-term health implications on cloned animals.
America, the UK, South Korea and China all already clone animals but the industry is largely unregulated.
Critics are that the practice is inhumane and the impact on offspring when clones mate with the broader gene pool.
What else is being cloned?
Last year, Barbra Streisand revealed that her pups Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett are replicas of her deceased Coton de Tulear, Samantha.
Mice, pigs, goats and monkeys have all been cloned and Sinogene are working on cloning a horse and have hopes of duplicating endangered animals like pandas and tigers.
Thankfully, scientists agree that, while technically feasible, cloning whole humans is not on the cards - yet.
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