Puppy power: Heroic 9/11 rescue dog is cloned five times after winning competition

By Claire Bates

A dog who was hailed for his heroism during the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been cloned.

Scientists said they have successfully produced five puppies who are genetic copies of Trackr, a German Shepherd who searched for survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Centre.

The puppies called Trustt, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu, are aged between two and six months.

Enlarge

James Symington poses with five puppies cloned from his faithful friend Trackr, who passed away in April

The faithful hound died in April aged 16, but before he passed away his owner James Symington entered a contest that offered to clone a pet dog for free. It currently costs owners about £75,000 to clone their pet.

Trackr was judged to be the most 'cloneworthy dog' after the former police officer from Canada wrote an impassioned essay.

'Once in a lifetime, a dog comes along that not only captures the hearts of all he touches but also plays a private role in history,' Mr Symington wrote.

He said he hopes to put the five new dogs to work in search-and-rescue teams.

The puppies are the first German Shepherds ever cloned, according BioArts International

Trackr, pictured with owner James Symington, helped find the last survivor from the New York terrorist attacks in September 2001

The Best Friends Again contest was run by Californian company BioArt International, who claim to have the sole worldwide license for cloning dogs and cats. They partnered with the controversial cloning specialist Hwang Woo-Suk from South Korea to create Trackr's clones.

Hwang's team replaced the genes in eggs from random dogs with genes harvested from Trakr. They grew into embryos after they were stimulated and were then placed in surrogate mothers.

'Trakr's story blew us away,' said Lou Hawthorne, CEO of BioArts.

'His many remarkable capabilities were proven beyond all doubt on our nation's darkest hour.'

However, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said they had concerns about the health of cloned dogs.

They released a statement that said: 'Our current knowledge of animal cloning indicates that there are important welfare concerns at issue.

'Reports on the health and condition of mammalian animals produced by cloning have indicated a variety of anatomical and physiological problems.'

Fertility expert: 'I can clone a human being'

Controversial doctor filmed creating embryos before injecting them into wombs of women wanting cloned babies

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Cady, died aged 10 in a car crash in the US. Her blood cells were frozen and sent to Dr Zavos, who fused them with cow eggs to create cloned human animal hybrid embryos

World's first cloned camel unveiled in Dubai

The ambitious desert emirate of Dubai has claimed another first, this time in the science of cloning camels.

By Richard Spencer in Dubai

Injaz, claimed to be the world's first cloned camel. Injaz, a female, was born on April 8, 2009 Photo: AFP

Injaz, or Achievement, was unveiled to the world alongside her surrogate mother five days after being born at the city's Camel Reproduction Centre.

"This is the first time scientists have cloned a camel calf," the scientific director of the central veterinary research laboratory, Dr Ulrich Wernery, said. "She is a healthy female."

The project had the personal backing of Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, best known in Britain as one of the world's leading racehorse owners.

The Camel Reproduction Centre now hopes to use the technique on some of Dubai's leading racing camels to preserve elite bloodlines for the future.

Camel racing is a popular past-time in the Gulf region, though the traditional child riders have largely been replaced by robots due to humanitarian concerns.

"We are all very excited by the birth of Injaz," Dr Lulu Skidmore, the centre's scientific director, said. "This significant breakthrough in our research programme gives a means of preserving the valuable genetics of our elite racing and milk-producing camels in the future."

The scientists employed the standard animal cloning techniques first used in the case of Dolly the sheep in 1996 by scientists in Edinburgh.

Injaz is the clone of a camel slaughtered for its meat in 2005. The ovaries were removed and DNA extracted and placed in an egg taken from and re-implanted into the surrogate mother.

Tests since Injaz's birth have shown the camel's DNA to be a copy of the dead animal, not the mother.

The birth, after an "uncomplicated" gestation period of 378 days, followed a number of unsuccessful attempts at producing a clone.

The Camel Reproduction Centre previously produced the world's first "Cama", the first surviving hybrid of a camel and a guanaco, a type of llama.

The Top 5 “Crazy” Michael Crichton Ideas That Actually Came True

Given the recent death of best-selling author and sci-fi pioneer Michael Crichton, we thought it was the perfect time to reflect on some of his most innovative and fascinating ideas…that just happened to have come true.

5. Talking Gorillas: Congo (1980) was more than just another notch into the decent-book-cum-awful-movie belt. It also highlighted what was once a novel concept: that apes could use human language to communicate. Cute little Amy, with her sign language glove (which appeared in the movie but not the book), was loosely based on Koko the gorilla, whose actual linguistic abilities continue to be debated.

Since then, there’s been Kanzi, a bonobo who “apparently has learned more than 3,000 spoken English words and can produce (by means of lexigrams) novel English sentences and comprehend English sentences he has never heard before.” Granted, those who doubted before remain unconvinced.

4. Self-Replicating Robots: In Prey (2002), Crichton created a world of self-replicating nanorobots with rudimentary intelligence and predatory instincts, who spend several hundred pages running amok and causing all sorts of mayhem.

Today, researchers have developed robots that can physically self assemble, and even produce copies of themselves. Granted, getting to that next stage—manufacturing more of themselves from raw materials—is substantially harder.

3. Superbugs from Space: Crichton’s debut novel, The Andromeda Strain (1969), terrified readers with the ultimate biohazard: a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that infects human blood and mutates like wildfire to defy containment.

Lucky for us, the chances of the next pandemic hurling in from space are slim to none. But the book brought the concept of bio-safety levels to far more advanced heights. As for the next great bug, not only have we created antibiotic-resistant superbugs here on Earth, we’ve also discovered that some strains become more virulent when sent into space. (Though fear not: They become far less deadly once they’ve made the journey home.)

2. Brain Implants: Crichton’s 1972 thriller The Terminal Man was far ahead of its time. The hero, suffering from “thought seizures” after a car accident, undergoes a procedure in which electrodes are implanted in his brain. Unfortunately, since the electrodes also stimulate his pleasure center, the implant winds up doing far more harm than good.

Today, electrode-studded swim caps let people control robots using only their thoughts, and brain implants are not only real but can be used to help deaf people hear and blind people see—and may be the future of treatment for depression and other mental disorders.

1. Cloning Dead (Or Even Extinct) Animals: First prize goes to the eponymous Jurassic Park (1990), in which science-minded billionaire John Hammond concocts a scheme to clone dinosaurs using DNA extracted from prehistoric mosquitoes. The dinos are created/hatched, the park is opened, and the inevitable happens. Dinner, anyone?

Skip forward to today, where scientists have successfully cloned mice that have been dead and frozen for 16 years. There’s even talk of cloning long-extinct woolly mammoths. And let’s not forget cryogenically frozen humans (Ted Williams, we hardly knew ye).

Image: Screenshot from A&E’s television version of The Andromeda Strain.