Missyplicity

The Missyplicity Project was a project devoted to cloning Joan Hawthorne and John Sperling's dog, a border collie and husky mix. Missy died on July 6, 2002 at the age of 15 years.

In 1997, news that Dolly the sheep had been cloned inspired the couple to find out whether their dog Missy could also be cloned. In 1998, a multimillion-dollar project was launched to clone Missy, trading as "Genetic Savings & Clone". Missy died in 2002 before efforts to clone her had succeeded, but her DNA was gene banked for future cloning efforts.

One of the key scientists on the Missyplicity Project and Genetic Savings & Clone was Dr. Taeyoung Shin, who was born and completed his Ph.D. in South Korea before moving to the United States. After both The Missyplicity Project and GSC proved unable to clone dogs, Dr. Shin’s Ph.D. thesis advisor, Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, led a team of research scientists at Seoul National University in a major dog cloning effort. This project was designed to overcome the specific obstacles encountered by both the Missyplicity and GSC teams.

In 2005, Dr. Hwang and his team successfully cloned the world’s first dog, which they named Snuppy. In 2007, Lou Hawthorne, former CEO of GSC and current CEO of BioArts International, was introduced to Dr. Hwang and his team by Dr. Shin of BioArts, and asked if they would clone Missy. They agreed and Missy’s conserved cells were flown to the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation outside of Seoul.

The scientists at Sooam, led by Dr. Hwang, used Missy’s cells to successfully produce three Missy clones. After 10 years of research and effort, the quest to clone Missy had finally succeeded. Three identical clones of Missy were returned to the original owners. The clones are named Mira (after a Korean myth of an all-powerful benevolent dragon), Chingu (which means "friend" in Korean) and Sarang ("love").

Mira, born December 5, 2007, was the world’s first clone of a family dog and bore a striking physical and behavioral resemblance to the original Missy. Chingu and Sarang were born on February 15 and 19. They were flown to the United States on April 18, where they joined their genetic sister Mira.

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