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Litter of puppies cloned from a pitbull

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An American woman received five puppies Tuesday that were cloned from her beloved late pit bull, becoming the inaugural customer of a South Korean company that says it is the world’s first successful commercial canine cloning service. The Associated Press reports:

Seoul-based RNL Bio said the clones of Bernann McKinney’s dog Booger were born last week after being cloned in cooperation with a team of Seoul National University scientists who created the world’s first cloned dog in 2005. ‘It’s a miracle!’ McKinney repeatedly shouted Tuesday when she saw the cloned Boogers at a Seoul National University laboratory. ‘Yes, I know you! You know me too!’ McKinney said joyfully, hugging the puppies, which were sleeping with one of their two surrogate mothers, both Korean mixed-breed dogs. The team of scientists working for RNL Bio is headed by Lee Byeong-chun, a former colleague of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who scandalized the international scientific community when his purported breakthroughs in cloned stem cells were revealed as fake in 2005. Independent tests confirmed the 2005 dog cloning was genuine, and Lee’s team has since cloned more than 20 canines. But RNL Bio said that its cloning was the first successful commercial cloning of a canine.

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