Have you ever seen a cloned cat?

my country’s first independently bred cloned cat, Garlic, is two days away from being one month old.

Clone cat "Garlic"

"Garlic has been with me for three years, and he passed away due to illness. Now through cloning technology, Garlic has come to me again, and we will start a new life," Huang Yu, the owner of the cloned cat Garlic, said excitedly.

“‘Garlic’ was born successfully through natural delivery of a surrogate cat on July 21, 2019, and was recognized as a cloned cat by a third-party agency. The kitten is now in good health.” Mi Jidong, general manager of Xino Valley Biotechnology Co., Ltd., announced on August 19 that my country’s first cloned cat completely independently bred was born.

Clone cat "Garlic" (right) and surrogate cat mother (left)

After exploring pre-experiments such as oocyte maturation culture conditions in vitro and parthenogenetic activation conditions, the scientific research and technical team officially began the research and development experiment of cloned cats in August 2018. The surrogate cat gave birth successfully 66 days after the embryo transfer. "Garlic" is a very cute British shorthair cat.

"Judging from the current level of cloning technology, the success rate of successfully producing a cloned cat from four surrogate cats is high." Chen Dayuan, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes.

Shi Zhensheng, a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at China Agricultural University, said: "The reproductive physiological characteristics of cats are different from those of most animals, because cats do not ovulate spontaneously, but are one of the few animals that induce ovulation. They have a special reproductive cycle, cloning technology is difficult and the operation is cumbersome. This successful breeding of cloned cats is one of the few successful cases in the world, marking a big step forward in the field of cloning in my country."

On the left is the cloned cat "Garlic", and on the right is the cloned cat (deceased)

Zhao Jianping introduced that after cultivating the world's first gene-edited disease model dog, the world's first gene-edited cloned dog, and my country's first cloned police dog through independent intellectual property technology, the company has successfully extended cloning technology to cats and felines. "According to industry statistics in 2018, the number of cat owners in my country's cities and towns reached 22.58 million, with a total of 40.64 million cats." Zhao Jianping is optimistic about the commercial market for cloned cats. He revealed: "Currently we have received seven or eight commercial orders for cloned cats."

“We will apply cloning technology more widely to canine and feline breeding, and at the same time explore xenogeneic surrogacy technology for endangered or extinct animals.” Zhao Jianping revealed that they will also try to apply it in multiple fields such as equines, homing pigeons and model animals.

Xia Xianzhu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that species resources are increasingly becoming the focus of countries around the world. Our country is rich in biological species resources, but due to various reasons, many species are in an endangered state. Through somatic cell preservation, the establishment of animal germplasm banks, the use of cloning technology can increase the population of endangered animal species, and through genetic testing, individual animal population management and disease control can be achieved. These are the application directions of biotechnology.

(Original title "Cute! The first cloned cat independently bred in China is here, and it is called "Garlic"". Editor Qian Yi)