Hwang Woo-suk - Hwang's Laboratory Technique

Hwang's Laboratory Technique

In the late 1990s, the method that scientists used in cloning was somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is the same procedure that was used to create Dolly the sheep. This laboratory technique begins when an egg is taken from a donor and the nucleus is removed from the egg, creating an enucleated egg. A cell, which contains DNA, is then taken from the animal being cloned. The enucleated egg is then fused together with the nucleus of the cloning subject's cell using electricity. This creates an embryo, which is implanted into a surrogate mother through in vitro fertilization. If the procedure is successful, then the surrogate mother will give birth to a baby that is a clone of the cloning subject at the end of a normal gestation period. The success rate is only about one or two out of 100 embryos. It took 277 attempts to create Dolly.

Hwang allegedly used this technique at his laboratory in SNU to clone dogs during his experiments throughout the early 2000s. He claimed that it was possible to clone mammals and that probability for success can be better than 1 in 277 attempts (as in similar cases such as Dolly). Although much of Hwang's animal cloning work conspicuously lacked any supporting papers, Hwang's cloned dog, Snuppy, was featured in an August 2005 issue of Nature.

Hwang's intention to develop better techniques on cloning was focused on stem cells because they are still at an early stage of development and retain the potential to turn into many different types of cell and when they divide, each new cell has the potential to either remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function.

According to stem cell biologists, it might be possible to harness this ability to turn stem cells into a super "repair kit" for the body, theoretically to use stem cells to generate healthy tissue to replace that either damaged by trauma or compromised by disease. The many conditions and illnesses that may eventually be treated by stem cell therapy include Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, diabetes, burns, and spinal cord damage.

In March 2012, it was announced that Hwang would collaborate with Russian scientists in an attempt to clone a woolly mammoth from remains found in Siberia. He had previously announced the successful cloning of a coyote in 2011.