Owner ensures TV canine wonder gets more Juice
BEIJING: Juice is a 30cm canine wonder who has starred in dozens of Chinese film and TV productions. His Beijing-based master has one wish for the mutt, to live on… maybe forever.
The nine-year-old Juice, Guozhi in Mandarin, is unable to reproduce since he was neutered from an early age, but animal trainer He Jun wants to continue his star pooch’s image by making a genetic clone.
To achieve this, He went to Sinogene, China’s first biotech company to provide pet cloning services.
Sinogene made headlines when it successfully cloned a beagle in May last year. A month later, it launched commercial cloning services.
For 380 000 yuan (R790 000), pet owners can clone their pets.
Sinogene chief executive Mi Jidong said the company’s pet cloning business was in its initial stages but he planned to expand services to eventually include gene editing.
“We’ve discovered that more and more pet owners want their pets to accompany them for an even longer period of time,” said Mi.
In Juice’s case, skin samples were collected from his lower abdomen and within weeks, Sinogene was able to isolate his DNA and fertilise an egg.
The fertilised egg was surgically inserted into the uterus of a surrogate mother dog, in this case a beagle.
Juice’s copy, Little Juice, Zhizhi in Chinese, was born in September and stayed with its surrogate mother in Sinogene’s lab for about a month.
The puppy was later given to He at a small ceremony.
While He hasn’t committed Little Juice to show business just yet, he sees potential. | Reuters