By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
A team of scientists, led by Professor Kong Il-keun at Gyeongsang National University, are trying to clone endangered animals by using eggs of animals of a different genus within the same family.
Kong said Tuesday that his team will start cloning wildcats, whose numbers are dwindling, through transferring their somatic cells to denuclearized ova of domesticated cats.
"The biggest trouble in replicating endangered animals has been that eggs were not available from females of the same genus. For one, it is practically impossible to get ova of wildcats en masse," Kong said.
"Yet, the eggs of domesticated cats are easily available. Hence, if we can successfully clone wildcats through using these ova, we will be able to demonstrate a new method for saving threatened wildlife," he said.
The work of Kong's team is dubbed inter-genus cloning because wildcats and domesticated are of a different genus although they are classified as the same family.
No scientist has ever been successful in this form of cloning of mammals so far, despite repeated attempts.
"It's basically the same technology used to replicate other animals such as lambs, goats and cows - merging somatic cells with enucleated eggs in order to produce clones," Kong said.
Scottish embryologist Scot Wilmut created the method to clone the first mammal, Dolly the Sheep, in 1997.
"The only difference is that the somatic cells of donor animals will be inserted into eggs of animals of a different genus. We will learn whether the trials will be possible midway through this year," he said.
As far as cat cloning is concerned, Kong's team has a knack as they produced a group of kittens in 2004 for the first time in the country, and two years after the first of their kind was born in 2002 in the United States.
In 2007, Kong and his aides cloned cats after modifying a gene to change their skin color.
After inserting red fluorescence protein in their skin cells, three cloned kittens looked reddish under ultraviolet light - the experiment was geared toward researching a set of genetic diseases in both animals and humans.
"Actually, we established a pregnancy a couple years ago based on the inter-genus cloning but it was miscarried," Kong said.
"By around July, we should have cloned wildcats or we will merely learn that inter-genus replication is almost impossible with current technology. Let's see," he added.
Experts say that the experiment has a shot at reaping substantive results.
"Korean scientists have cloned wolves by using dogs through eggs and surrogate mothers. Even though they are of the same genus, they are quite different," said professor Hyun Sang-hwan at Chungbuk National University. "Because wildcats and cats are closely related, I think Kong's trials may succeed,"