Mini Winnie was born in Seoul after a test-tube procedure

Apr 10, 2014 07:46 GMT  ·  By

A few months ago, a team of South Korean scientists from Sooam Biotech announced the UK Dog Cloning Competition, which gave one lucky Briton the chance to create a clone of his or her dog free of charge.

Well, the winner of that competition was Rebecca Smith, a cook from west London. She cloned her 12-year-old dachshund Winnie, and now she’s the proud owner of a tiny puppy called Mini Winnie. The dachshund puppy, born after a £60,000 ($100,500 or €72,700) test-tube procedure, weighing just over 1lb (0.5 kg), is Britain’s first cloned dog.

Mini Winnie was born in Seoul, on March 30, and the entire conceiving process was filmed and broadcast by a British television on Wednesday. Rebecca was there and witnessed the birth of the puppy.

The 29-year-old owner of the cloned dog said, “We Brits do have a close attachment to our dogs, so it is exciting. My sausage dog is very special but she is 12 and not going to be around forever. My boyfriend always joked, ‘We need to get her cloned.’”

Apparently, the innocent joke turned into reality after Rebecca’s pet won the unusual contest. The Mirror details the entire conceiving process, explaining that a sample of Winnie's tissue was stored in liquid nitrogen before being transported to Seoul, where her cells were put into eggs from a donor animal of the same breed.

Thus, a cloned embryo was created and then implanted into another dog. After the gestation period, the cloned puppy was born by caesarean section.

According to the same source, Sooam Biotech has already cloned more than 500 dogs for animal lovers from all over the world. The same company created the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, and has also cloned in its laboratory highly trained rescue and police dogs for the South Korean government.

Now, the firm hopes that other British residents will be willing to pay the staggering sum to have their “best friends” cloned.

On the other hand, Prof. Sir Ian Wilmut, who led the team of researchers who produced Dolly the Sheep, expressed his skepticism regarding the benefits of cloning dogs.

“I think that the owners might be disappointed – so much of the personality of a dog probably comes from the way that you treat it. I think you would treat a cloned dog, particularly if you had spent $100,000, differently, so the dog would be different. I am sufficiently skeptical that I personally would not have a dog cloned,” he said.