You see, they’re copy cats. Get it? From Company Says It Clones Copy Cats:
Genetic Savings & Clone promises to clone anyone’s pet — for $50,000 or so — and started with chief executive officer Lou Hawthorne’s own pet cat.The two kittens, Tabouli and Baba Ganoush, were born to separate surrogate mothers in June, the company said.
[...]
The company used a new method called chromatin transfer, which had been perfected by cloning expert James Robl and colleagues at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Hematech LLC. Hematech is using the method to clone cattle that produce human antibodies in their milk.The traditional nuclear transfer method of cloning involves taking the nucleus from a cell of the animal to be cloned, putting it into an egg cell with its own nucleus removed, and then triggering this egg into growing as if it had been fertilized.
It is not efficient — most eggs die — and many animals are born deformed.
Chromatin transfer aims to produce a cloned embryo that more closely resembles a normal embryo.
It involves dissolving the outside of the nucleus of the cell to be cloned and removing certain regulatory proteins from the chromosomes, which carry the genes, and the proteins around the chromosomes.
This entire cell with its permeable nucleus is fused to an egg cell to create the clone.
Genetic Savings & Clone said it has tried the method to duplicate Tahini, a 1-year-old female Bengal cat belonging to Hawthrone. Bengals are specially bred crosses of Asian Leopard Cats and domestic cats.