Korean wolf cloning confirmed

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Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by pawnee » Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:48 pm

Seoul National University panel determines scientists successfully cloned wolves, but the manuscript describing the research contained unintentional error

The authors of a study describing the first-ever cloning of endangered gray wolves have been cleared of intentional data manipulation by investigators at Seoul National University (SNU), where the research was conducted.

On Friday (April 27), SNU's Research Integrity Committee proclaimed the two wolves, Snuwolf and Snuwolffy, genuine clones after two labs -- one at SNU and the other outside of the university -- used tissue testing to confirm successful cloning.

However, the university said that the SNU researchers who conducted the study made several "unintentional" mistakes when writing the manuscript, including three data entry errors in two tables listing the microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA sequences of the study animals.

According to SNU, officials became suspicious of the findings at the end of March when young scientists began questioning the data on the message board of a Korean bio-engineering center Web site, including accusing the researchers of intentionally underestimating previous dog cloning success rates in the paper in order to inflate the success rate of their wolf results.

This prompted the Korean team, which also produced the world's first cloned dog in 2005, to request corrections to the text, causing the journal that published the findings, Cloning and Stem Cells, to pull the paper from its Web site.

The committee vindicated the SNU research team, led by veterinary scientist and former Woo-Suk Hwang collaborator Byeong-Chun Lee, of intentional data tampering after weeks of combing seized computer files and research notes.

In the original dog study, the investigators produced two cloned dogs out of 1095 embryos, creating an initial published success rate of 0.18 percent. However, one of the clones later died, so in the wolf manuscript, the authors changed their success rate to 0.09 percent. They reported the wolf cloning success rate as 0.80 percent, or two clone births from 251 embryos, which remains an increase on either of the dog cloning figures.

Vicki Cohn, managing editor at Mary Ann Liebert publishers, which publishes Cloning and Stem Cells, told The Scientist in an Email that editor-in-chief Ian Wilmut has received no comments from SNU, and therefore cannot comment on the committee's findings. "We are hoping to get a formal response from them, in which case he will decide whether or not to re-instate the paper online."

Martha Gomez, senior scientist at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans, who has been working to clone endangered species since 2001, said she never doubted that the team successfully cloned wolves. "To fake a clone is hard," she told The Scientist.

But she too faulted the team's manuscript, saying it didn't provide nearly enough data to support their conclusions. "They didn't give you enough tables and data so that you can make your own decision" about the validity of their claims, said Gomez.

In particular, Gomez said that the Korean team should have included more information on the numbers of donor animals, the proportions of successful fusions and embryo implantations, and more robust tables describing the mitochondrial DNA analyses used to verify the study's results.

"I also blame the reviewers of the manuscript," she said. "How did they not catch this before it went out?" The authors of the wolf cloning study could not be reached for comment by deadline.

The Korean wolf cloning team was once led by Woo-Suk Hwang, who resigned from SNU after he fabricated data relating to his research on cloning human embryos. The cloned dog, however, was found to be genuine. Hwang is currently on trial in Korea for violating the country's bioethics laws, among other charges.

Bob Grant
mail@the-scientist.com

Links within this article:

MK Kim et al, "Endangered wolves cloned from adult somatic cells," Cloning Stem Cells, Spring 2007.
http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/17386020

Cloning and Stem Cells
http://www.liebertpub.com/publication.aspx?pub_id=9

B. Grant, "Korean wolf cloning study pulled," The Scientist, April 12, 2007.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53065/

A. McCook, "Hwang faked results, says panel," The Scientist, December 23, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22870/

I. Oransky, "First dog cloned," The Scientist, August 3, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22746/

I. Oransky, "All Hwang cloning work fraudulent," The Scientist, January 10, 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Midnight Snow » Thu Dec 13, 2007 1:16 am

You seem to be able to fish up every single piece of information about wolves!
As of reviewing this, it is impressive that they've even tried to clone wolves. It shows that cloning can revive the endagered species in a later time. Or at least I hope so.
Thanks for sharing this!

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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by tiffa » Thu Dec 13, 2007 1:19 am

eh..im against cloning.so far they all have somthing wrong with them.and its just kinda sad for the creature,human or animal. just my opinion,nothnig can change my mind about it
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Bellamy » Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:29 am

eh..im against cloning.so far they all have somthing wrong with them.and its just kinda sad for the creature,human or animal. just my opinion,nothnig can change my mind about it
Cloning is quite a controversial subject. However, I think it's kind of naive to say that nothing can change your mind about it. You can never be sure of that. Saying that your opinion can never be changed makes you sound as if you're just trying to close off your mind from being told good reasons by people who do support cloning.

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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Blindseer » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:22 am

I don't really support the cloning of entire animals or people, but I do support the cloning of body parts for medical use.
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Chenneoue » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:24 am

To say yes or no for every situation is hard. But in general, I would not mind cloning if it was to make up for a mistake that people created. Such as the extintion of animals because of over hunting or habitat loss. Assuming we could create the same or better enviroment for them. Wouldn't want to make something and not have it work all over again.

I certainly do not want to see a Jarassic Park thing to happen. ;) Nor do I see the point in cloning people, or their organs/body parts or what have you (I won't want someone cloned heart or whatever!).

Even still, I don't like the idea of using it. We are not creating a sound copy, its a weak one at best. But, I would not my opinion stand of the way of advances.

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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Vida » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:03 pm

I agree that cloning for medical use is okay. I am interested in cloned animals but it's sad to see that they often have a lot of health problems.
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by tiffa » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:12 pm

Blindseer wrote:I don't really support the cloning of entire animals or people, but I do support the cloning of body parts for medical use.
hmm..i guess i dont have a prob with that,as long as ur not cloning humans and wacking it off of em to get the parts.
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by tiffa » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:19 pm

Bellamy wrote:
eh..im against cloning.so far they all have somthing wrong with them.and its just kinda sad for the creature,human or animal. just my opinion,nothnig can change my mind about it
Cloning is quite a controversial subject. However, I think it's kind of naive to say that nothing can change your mind about it. You can never be sure of that. Saying that your opinion can never be changed makes you sound as if you're just trying to close off your mind from being told good reasons by people who do support cloning.
no offense ive just noticed that about ever clone ive seen or heard of has so many health probs.its just sad that they have to suffer.and what about the human cloning,i meen how will they react when they realize they where created and not born like us.its just sad that humans experiment with there own.b4 u know it well have clones walking around and then well have to worry about another racist thing going around.im NOT racist by the way, just saying theres people out there that are,lol
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by ChocolateRain » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:51 pm

The thing about cloning is, even though it may be good for some reasons and bad for others, as long as any form of cloning is allowed it'll eventually be used for everything else.

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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by pawnee » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:52 pm

I have a question, if wlves are extinct in Korea, then where did the scientists get the DNA from? It would have to be the korean wolf sub-type in order to say your saving an "endangered" animal. If the scientists just cloned grey wolves from the USA captive populations, then its not really saving an endangered asian animal.

In regards to cloning, I think you might be mistaking the idea fro stem cell research, which is rather controversial. Cloning just means your just making a look a like copy of another animal. Cloning doesn`t really hurt the animal but scientists have yet too see all the effects of current technologies. Stem cells require some scientists to use the cells from a fertilized egg.

I hope that helps. Lets keep the conversation on cloning wolves....I wonder if you could colne the wolf green, like how those japanese pigs turned out
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Blindseer » Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:13 pm

stem cell research is part of the subject of cloning.
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by pawnee » Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:13 pm

not be distracting here, but stem cells are cells that can be grown to be almost anything. Cloning is just making a copy, genetic engineering is the combination or enhancment of living things (like putting fish genes in tomatoes) and stem cells are used to grow new things, e.g if a star fish is spilt apart, the star fish will grow new limbs
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by tikomi » Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:12 pm

I am purely against cloning ANYTHING. THe clone, as I see IT, is not a real animal, it is nothing but a fake copy. Many animals that have been "successfully" cloned have ended up with very short lives or even the animal cloned has died shortly after. It is also a way to give entire populations a disease. And who's to say that during the process, even if it ends up successful, the animals didn't suffer minorly or greatly. It is like animal experimentation in many ways, in fact it is. NO animal in experimentation is to be given any anasthetics or pain relievers for fear of screwing up the results, I imagin it is similar in cloning because an anasthetic that gets cloned from animal to copy could screw up the copy.

I am very sorry if anyone got offended by this, I have not done very much research on cloning, but I prefer the original, even if the species is on the brink of extinction, otherwise you have identical copys that are like ropots given minds in my opinion. Sorry if this was harsh too.
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Re: Korean wolf cloning confirmed

Post by Argos » Tue Jan 08, 2008 6:19 pm

Maybe they could clone a super wolf the size of a large horse. Then we could clone other predators and have clone fights. Since they can be easily replaced with an exact copy it's not unethical. It's like replacing one lamp with another.
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