Project Copycat Clones A Cat

texchanchan writes: "'Copying' is not limited to other people's proprietary files. Soon you'll be able to 'share' their prize Siamese. From Yahoo news: "A domestic cat was cloned late last year in a Texas A&M University research program called CopyCat....Cloning research at the university has been funded with more than $3.5 million in investments from John Sperling, an 81-year-old financier who formed Genetic Savings & Clone Inc." (These Texans know how to name things, too.)"

Comments

Re:Marketing At Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who can raise that much funding for a feline cloning program called 'CopyCat' has a real future in marketing or political fundraising.

I don't think that is odd at all. Can you imagine the number of people that would like to clone "Fluffy" when their pet dies? It should be a growth business, so to speak.

Re:Intel has better batch yield

[ichimunki]

Cripes, here I'm joking about it, but then I find this at the end of the article, "The Humane Society of the United States opposes pet cloning, the Journal said, because of the danger of overpopulation." Yeah, cloning is going to cause cat populations to go all out of control.

I have a real problem with this

[LordNimon]

There are an estimated 6 to 8 million cats and dogs killed every year because they are not adopted. That's right, every year, millions of cats are purposely killed because no one will adopt them. So if your cat dies, the right thing to do would be to adopt another cat. Save the life of another animal, please!

People who would clone their cat rather than adopt another one disgust me. According the article, the new cat probably won't look the same anyway! And whether it will behave the same is also questionable. So in other words, it is both unethical and pointless to clone your cat.

I wonder

[MsWillow]

Given the problems already showing up with Dolly the sheep, already having problems associated with old age, why not try cloning from a stem cell?

I'd think that, by using the nucleus of an adult stem cell, you'd get all the DNA needed. Every strand of the DNA would then still have the telomers on it that gradually get "used up" when a normal cell divides. Perhaps that way, all the cells in the cloned animal would start out eactly the same as a normal embryo's cells.

Perhaps that's the way to go, not by taking the nucleus out of just any old cell, but by using an adult stem cell. They seem to have found these in several sites on the adult body - in fat removed by liposuction, and in the fat behind the kneecap in humans. I'm sure they can find them in analogous places on animals.

Biggest potential growth industry

[Orangedog_on_crack]

Granted, there are going to be people that will have serious issues with the idea of cloning pets. But once the process is perfected for dogs and cats, pet cloning will be one of the biggest industries in the country.

Think about this. How many people out there would pay serious money to have a chance to "hit the reset button" if something happens to a cherished pet. I've had a dog that died, like all dogs do. Nothing could replace her because she was unique and there are some things that even cloning can't copy. But I would have moved heaven and earth to have a chance to start over again with a puppy that would have at least grown up to look like her. Dare I say that my parents would have even taken out a 2nd mortgage on the house for the money if cloning was an option.

This is more than just the "gee-whiz" factor of having the fastest PC or a TIVO with 2 Terabyte RAID storage. This is dealing with people's emotions and people with money will spend it like drunken sailors if they know that a few thousand dollars can get them an exact living, breathing, physical copy of their pet after they die.