Veterinary Medicine News, UC Davis, Fall 2008

Canine Clone Confirmed in “Missyplicity” Project

When BioArts International reported this year that the company had created three clones of a favorite family pet, Missy, scientists at the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory (VGL) were not surprised. In fact, the school’s experts were the ones who confirmed that the animals were indeed clones of Missy, a dog that died in 2002. The VGL’s parentage testing laboratory used a canine-specific panel of 24 DNA markers to confirm that Missy’s nuclear DNA was present in each of the clones. Some of the markers were developed at UC Davis; the rest are used worldwide. Missy’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is another factor.

Beth Wictum of the VGL’s Forensic unit says that the forensic group “used its expertise in mitochondrial DNA sequencing to confirm that the clones were different from Missy and matched the donor moms. Since mitochondrial DNA is in the egg and therefore passed through the maternal line, each clone would have the mtDNA type of the egg donor mom, not that of Missy.”“The forensic lab group also used a new panel of DNA markers, developed for profiling dogs in forensic casework,” adds Wictum. “That made a total of 39 autosomal DNA markers. The more markers you use, the stronger the test. The fact that these dogs matched Missy at 39 markers very strongly supports the claim that they are indeed clones. What is unique about the forensic panel,” Wictum says, “is that these are all new markers that Aaron Wong from Mark Neff’s lab at the Center for Companion Animal Health has identified from the published dog genome, so no one else is using these yet.”

In 2002, scientists at Texas A&M produced “cc,” the first cloned cat. In that case, UC Davis geneticist Leslie Lyons verified that the cat was a clone, although the animal, a calico, did not look exactly like its parent.