Researchers found a way to clone pet cats five years ago. Now they can play a trick on their genes to change their color.
A Gyeongsang National University team said they have succeeded in cloning cats after modifying a gene to change their skin color. Because of the red fluorescence protein in their skin cells, the three Turkish Angola kittens look reddish under ultraviolet light, the researchers said.
A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes.
"It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned. The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," the Ministry of Science and Technology in its statement opined.
The cats were born in January and February. One was stillborn while two others grew to become adult Turkish Angoras, weighing 3.0 kilograms and 3.5 kilograms.
"This technology can be applied to clone animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," the leading scientist, Kong, said.
"It will also help develop stem cell treatments," he said, noting that cats have some 250 kinds of genetic diseases that affect humans, too. The technology can also help clone endangered animals like tigers, leopards and wildcats, Kong said.
“We have proved our world-class ability in cloning animals that have modified characteristics,” said Kong. “We found that the red fluorescent protein in all the organs of the dead kitten, which means we have established an efficient way of cloning gene-modified cats.”
South Korea’s bio-engineering industry suffered a setback after a much-touted achievement by cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk turned out to have been faked.
The government banned Hwang from research using human eggs after his claims that he created the first human stem cells through cloning were ruled last year to be bogus. Hwang is standing trial on charges of fraud and embezzlement.
The first cloned cat, nicknamed Copycat, was born in 2002 at Texas A&M University. Many other animals such as cows, dogs, pigs, bulls and goats have been successfully cloned by a number of researchers in North America, Europe and South Korea.
Kong cloned a cat in 2004 for the first time in the country. He has since worked as director of research at a state-supported project to clone animals for therapeutic research.
To clone the Turkish Angola cats, Kong’s team used skin cells of the mother cat. They modified its genes to make them fluorescent by using a virus, which was transplanted into the ova. The ova were then implanted into the womb of the donor cat.
Called reproductive cloning, the method has been mostly used in cloning animals that are genetically identical, until Kong’s kittens were born with the tampered genes.
The technique differs from therapeutic cloning, which is to make a “stem cell” that can be guided to grow into a specific body part. Former Seoul National University professor Hwang Woo-suk used this method in his human stem cell cloning research, which was later found to have used fabricated data.