Science/Tech

British Couple Clone Their Dog and Make a History

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Dec 29, 2015 02:37 PM EST

Laura Jacques and Richard Remde got the best gift this Christmas when they got home a cloned replica of their beloved dog. On Christmas Day, the couple got home a cloned puppy that they called Chance. This one of a kind pet was created from the DNA of a dog that died nearly two weeks ago. Earlier, the cloned dogs could only be created through DNA of a live dog or the one that has just recently died. However, Jacques and Remde's pet dog, Dylan, died of a heart attack almost two weeks back after he was diagnosed with a deadly tumor. He was all of eight years when he succumbed to his illness. Remde immediately tool the DNA samples of his dog to South Korean lab, Sooam, with hopes to create an exact same reproduction of his deceased pet. Laura heard about dog cloning from a documentary made by a dog owner in UK who had he dachshund cloned. "I didn't know how I would be able to cope [without Dylan]," Jacques told the UK's Telegraph. "I thought I would have to throw myself off a bridge or something."

However, since the first sample that Remde brought failed and he had to visit South Korea again with biopsy from Dylan's abdomen. By the time Remde took the samples again, Dylan was already deceased for 12 days. This is the first time that a successful cloning could be done from a sample of a decomposed pet. The procedure costs $100,000. Sooam has cloned more than 700 dogs. "This is the first case we have had where cells have been taken from a dead dog after a very long time," David Kim, a scientist at Sooam, told The Guardian. "Hopefully it will allow us to extend the time after death that we can take cells for cloning."

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