Snuppy (born
April 24,
2005) is the first
cloned
dog. This
Afghan
hound clone was created by
Hwang
Woo-Suk and his team of scientists at
Seoul National University (SNU) in
South
Korea. The name "Snuppy" is a combination of "SNU" and "puppy."
The researchers transferred 1,095 dog embryos into 123 females, inducing
three pregnancies. One fetus miscarried, and one clone died of pneumonia after
three weeks. A
Labrador Retriever carried the third embryo to term. The team announced
their success in cloning in August of 2005.
[1]
Later in 2005 Hwang Woo-Suk was found to have fabricated evidence in
stem cell
research projects. This caused some to question the veracity of his other
experiments, including Snuppy.
[2] In their investigation of Hwang Woo-Suk's publication,
however, a team from SNU confirmed that Snuppy was a true clone of Tei, the DNA
donor dog.
[3]