The infamous Korean doctor Hwang Woo Suk showed how he clones animals. Its main goal is to reproduce a copy of the mammoth
In a South Korean laboratory, cloned puppies of different breeds and sizes were born - from beagle to Labrador. Serial production of dogs has been commercialized by Korean genetics.
NTV correspondent Sergei Malozyomov visited the laboratory and interviewed its notorious leader, Professor Hwang Woo Seok.
Florida retirees Nina and Ed Otto loved their Labrador dog Lancelot as a family member. His death from a serious illness was a heavy blow for them.
Ed Otto: "He was a very special dog, and we did not hesitate a minute, did not spare any money when the opportunity to resurrect him appeared."
Otto's geneticists were given a frozen piece of dog skin and $ 150,000. After 4 months, a puppy was brought to them from South Korea, which is indistinguishable from Lancelot in his youth.
Nina Otto: “He is very similar. Very.
It was cloned a couple of hours away from Seoul by Sooam, the only company in the world to put commercial cloning on stream. Already in the yard of the laboratory, everyone is greeted by a cheerful whine. And somehow you immediately realize that, probably, these are not ordinary watchdogs. So it is: all six funny beagles and two dogs of the national Korean breed are clones, with absolutely the same set of genes and with the same appearance as the originals.
In addition to Lancelot Jr., more than 100 dogs have already been cloned here over the years, including the legendary rescue shepherd named Trakar, who found the last survivor on the ruins of September 11th. The average price now is 100 thousand per dog.
Any healthy dog can be a donor. It is operated personally by Hwang Woo Suk, the famous geneticist who was the first to clone a dog in the early 2000s. Then he was arrested - it turned out that the work on the supposedly successful cloning of human embryonic stem cells (a potential cure for almost all diseases) was completely falsified. He was fired from all posts, but now he is trying to prove his innocence through the court and earns money by resurrecting favorites of American retirees. They more than once checked whether the doctor was cheating on them. But the clones turned out to be real.
Directly in front of the NTV camera in the laboratory of Hwang Woo Seok, where cloning takes place directly, its own nucleus is taken from the egg with the help of a special pipette and a microneedle and the nucleus of the cell of the organism, which, in fact, they want to clone, is inserted in place. Then he is implanted with a surrogate mother, who will have to carry cloned embryos.
By the way, dogs are also copied here for American universities, as laboratory animals. For example, beagles carry the gene for Alzheimer's disease. Medicines for humans will be tested on them. Even here, recently cloned animals on the verge of extinction - coyotes. Dogs were also surrogate mothers.
Hwang Woo Suk's assistants reveal the very human cells that were found to be fake during the investigation. Here they assure that an error has occurred.
Hwang Woo Suk: “Our ultimate goal is to clone a mammoth. And, of course, with the help of cloning cells of human embryos to cure incurable diseases of the brain, heart and other organs”.
For now, Koreans are ready to clone famous dogs for free. They dream, for example, to get the genetic material of the Russian Labrador Connie, a dog that has sniffed more than a dozen world leaders.