When his 6½-year-old Labrador retriever lost the ability to reproduce because of a womb disease, Yuji Satoh made a rather unusual choice: He cloned her.
Korean biotech firm unveils specialty dogs that come with a hefty price tag.
The retriever, named Marine, is the prize of St. Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Center in Shirahama, Japan, where Satoh is the head trainer. Marine is especially adept at recognizing the scent of certain chemicals found in cancer cells, and Satoh was interested in finding a way to pass her genetic traits on to other dogs.
With much hope, the dog's skin samples were sent to Seoul National University in Korea last December to be cloned in a cooperative project with RNL Bio Co Ltd., a Korean biotechnology firm.
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