Bengal cat is cloned using new, safer technique

Two cloned kittens have been born using a new, safer cloning technique, an American biotechnology company says. Genetics Saving and Clone cloned Tabouleh and Baba Ganoush from 'Tahini', a female Bengal cat belonging to Lou Hawthorne, the Chief Executive Officer of the company. The kittens are not the first to be born from cloning: Cc, the cloned kitten, was born in 2002.

The company used a method called chromatin transfer, rather than the more usual method of nuclear transfer, the technique that was used to create Dolly the sheep. Nuclear transfer involves taking the nucleus, which contains the DNA, from a cell, and transferring it to an egg that has had its own nucleus removed. When stimulated, the egg is 'tricked' into developing as if it had been fertilised. The method is not very effective: many eggs fail to develop and there have been some serious side effects in some animals that have been born using the technique.

Chromatin transfer, by contrast, aims to create an embryo that more closely resembles a normal embryo. The technique involves dissolving the outside of the nucleus in the cell to be cloned and removing some chromosomal proteins that regulate development, and other proteins around the chromosomes. The resulting cell, with its 'permeable' nucleus, is then fused with an egg cell. The method is used frequently in cattle cloning.

The cat cloning technique has not been submitted for peer review in a scientific journal, but Genetics Saving and Clone says it is less interested in the scientific questions and medical implications of cloning than in its business model - cloning people's pets. The company says it has already contracted to produce five more cat clones for customers by the end of 2004, at $50,000 a piece. It also hopes to have perfected dog cloning by the same time.