Cat copies

I had a great cat growing up. I got Tiger (original name, eh?) when he was a kitten, and he lived to be almost 18 (by which time I had long since left home and my parents were wondering why they were still looking after my cat).

Tiger was a wonderful pet–gentle, affectionate, and yet more than willing and able to reduce the rodent population as needed. Tiger was also expensive, especially in his later years when the vet bills started to go up. But I never counted the cost, because he was my cat and I had a responsibility to look after him.

That said, I think I’d draw the line at trying to bring him back from the dead.

Others, with more money and perhaps less sense, apparently don’t feel the same about their dear departed pets…and that’s what a San Francisco company by the name of Genetic Savings and Clone is counting on. A couple of years ago they were the first to successfully clone a household pet, a cat named CC. In February of last year they launched a commercial cat-cloning business–and a few weeks ago, just before Christmas, they delivered the first cloned-to-order pet to a Texas woman.

She paid Genetic Saving and Clone $50,000 (U.S.) to clone Little Nicky from the remains of her recently departed pet cat Nicky, who died in 2003 at the age of 17.

“Julie” (she’s worried that if she’s too well-identified she might be targeted by cloning opponents), Nicky’s owner. says that Little Nicky is the same as his prototype, at least in personality. Unlike you might expect, however, his coat is somewhat different–that’s because cat’s coats (and the coats of other multicolored animals) are determined not just by genetics but also by other developmental factors.

Nicky was cloned using a relatively new method called chromatin transfer. Most animals cloned since Dolly made headlines a few years ago have been cloned using nuclear transfer. In nuclear transfer cloning, an intact donor cell (typically a skin cell) is fused with an egg cell whose own genetic material has been removed. A healthy embryo results only if the egg is able to reprogram the donor cell, converting it from a differentiated cell to an undifferentiated state–in other words, getting it to forget it’s a skin cell. This happens rarely; the success rate ranges from 0.1 to three percent. Even when embryos are formed, they may face health problems after birth; according to a 2002 study, 23 percent of all mammals produced by nuclear transfer cloning fail to become healthy adults.

In chromatin transfer, the donor cell is pre-treated to remove molecules associated with cell differentiation–in the case of a skin cell, the proteins that make it a skin cell are dissolved, making the genetic material more readily accessible to the egg. This appears to boost the chance of a cloned embryo developing to eight percent, and it may reduce the risks of later health problems in the adult clone.

Now that it’s begun delivering cloned cats, Genetic Savings and Clone has begun offering “PetBank Express,” a gene banking service. For just $295 plus shipping, a pet’s genetic material will be preserved by GSC for future cloning. This is a lower-cost version of GSC’s existing “PetBank Ensure” service for live pets ($895) and PetBank Ensure Plus for dead pets ($1,395). The difference is that in the latter two cases the tissue is cultured and clients receive confirmation within 21 days that their pet’s tissue is viable for use in cloning. Those using the PetBank Express service won’t find out if pet’s tissue is viable until they actually order a clone.

Remarkably, at such prices, GSC says it has already banked the DNA of hundreds of animals, including several Hollywood animal actors–both cats and dogs; although they’re harder to clone than cats, GSC hopes to produce the first genetically cloned dog this spring.

Cloning continues to be controversial. Many critics object to the high failure rate. They also feel that if someone really cares about animals and has $50,000 to spend, that person should be donating the money to animal welfare agencies.

Personally, I figure it’s their money, and they’re entitled to do whatever they want with it. But if I had $50,000 U.S., I wouldn’t be spending it on a…am I the first one to think of calling it this?…a copycat.

Sorry, Tiger.

Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2005/01/cat-copies/

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