Scientist Hwang Woo-suk was already disgraced by the same panel from Seoul National University which concluded earlier in the year that there was no evidence to support a landmark paper released in May by Hwang’s team which made the claim that it had produced the world’s first tailored embryonic stem cells.
Claims were also made a few months later by Woo-suk that his team has successfully produced the world’s first cloned dog.
A DNA testing lab in Seoul affirmed on Tuesday that the dog, an Afghan hound puppy named Snuppy, was in fact an actual clone according to the results of blood tests it had conducted on the puppy.
“Our testing indicates Snuppy is a cloned dog,” said Lee Seung-jee, chief executive of DNA testing lab, Humanpass Inc.The laboratory is not part of the official investigation into Hwang’s work being conducted by the Seoul National University panel.
According to Lee, Hwang approached the lab independently in November to have the tests conducted on Snuppy.
Dogs are considered to be one of the most difficult animals to clone because of their reproductive cycle, with one panel member commenting that the process of verifying a cloned dog is more difficult than it may seem.
Snuppy, short for Seoul National University puppy, was born on April 24 after a normal, full-term pregnancy in a yellow Labrador surrogate mother.
