"How much does it cost to clone your pet?"

"What is it like to clone a deceased pet and bring it back to life?"

"The dead cat was cloned and brought back to life."

"The old lady from Haishi spent 180,000 yuan to clone a pet. Her grandson said that her grandma's pet dog will pass away soon due to old age and illness. In order to let her dog accompany her in another form, he and her grandma finally decided to spend 180,000 yuan after consultation.

180,000 yuan for pet cloning services.”

When Li Chengmin saw the hot search for cloned pets on the Internet, he was immediately struck.

His wish has always been that his pet can always be by his side.

His parents have been busy with work since he was a child and have little time to take care of him. As an only child, he has been very lonely since he was a child.

This situation intensified when he was in middle school, due to the pressure to enter higher education, and he even tended to be autistic and depressed.

However, a long-haired cat broke into the house and changed everything.

In the company of this docile, lovely and very humane kitten, his loneliness is no longer so strong, and he has become much more lively and cheerful.

After working, he rented a small apartment by himself and took the cat with him.

After more than ten years of companionship, this long-haired tabby cat named Nutgo has become a family member to him.

However, the life span of pets is not that long compared to humans, and they often cannot accompany their owners until the end.

Seeing Nu Nuo getting older day by day, with more and more gray hair, he was too lazy to walk every day, and would no longer be by his side all the time. Instead, he would lie lazily on the sofa and sleep all day long.

He knows that the day when Nut will leave is getting closer. Maybe next year, it will let go and return to the cat star.

This was undoubtedly an unbearable ending for him. Every time he thought of it, his heart ached, as if he had lost a close relative.

He also considered adopting another cat, but long-haired cats with civet colors like Nut are rare, and he insisted on wanting a long-haired cat with similar colors to Nut, but this request has not been received yet.

satisfy.

Now, when he saw the news about pet cloning, he instantly found a new direction.

Pet cloning may seem a little far away from most people's lives, but mentioning the world's first cloned sheep "Dolly", a case written in biology textbooks, will definitely evoke people's memories.

Ten years after Dolly was born, a scientific research team in Bangzi Country cloned the first hunting dog. By around 2007, cloned dogs had begun to be commercialized in Bangzi Country.

Around 2017, many domestic companies began to provide commercial pet cloning services. Cat and dog cloning became two of the more common types of commercially cloned pets, with prices ranging from 100,000 to more than 400,000.

The price of cloning pets is so high, but it cannot stop pet lovers who are willing to pay. The commercialized pet cloning track continues to attract an influx of companies.

But for Li Chengmin, the price is too expensive.

He has only worked for a year or two, his salary is not high, daily living expenses in Haishi are very expensive, he does not have much savings, and it is impossible to get support from his parents for this kind of thing. The sky-high cost of cloning of nearly 200,000 yuan is really far away.

Far beyond his capabilities.

After some inquiries, he gave up the idea of ​​commercial cloning with a look of regret.

At this moment, he came across biohacking on the Internet, and his eyes suddenly brightened.

Since he couldn't afford the cost of finding a pet cloning agency, he would do it himself.

Isn’t this the popular spirit of bio-DIY technology?

A lot of technical information is readily available online, so he is not afraid of learning.

To do experiments, you can watch videos and ask experts for advice. Even if you ask professionals for guidance, it doesn't cost much.

The reagents, equipment, venues, and shared laboratory with Longtu are about to be put into trial operation.

Everything is ready, all it takes is hard work.

Therefore, he resolutely joined the "Infinite Genes" biohacking group, met Zhang Han and others, and used all his energy to start learning biology and cloning technology from scratch.

The pet cloning process consists of four steps: extracting cell samples, extracting cell lines, constructing cloned embryos, and implanting into a surrogate mother to develop into a new individual.

Specifically, cloning a pet cat requires first extracting a cell sample from the pet, usually a small piece of skin, and using the cell sample to establish a somatic cell line. At the same time, a batch of female cats in suitable estrus state are selected to collect spare oocytes.

Subsequently, the nucleus of the mature cat oocyte is removed, and the cat somatic cells are transplanted into the cat oocyte to construct a cloned embryo.

The cloned embryos are then transplanted into the surrogate female cat. After the surrogate female cat becomes pregnant, the pet cat can be cloned.

The cloning process for dogs is basically similar to that for cats.

After learning, Li Chengmin began to practice. At the same time, he also took videos of all the processes and recorded them for verification.

Extracting cells is the first step in pet cloning.

He personally extracted the skin epidermal tissue of the old cat at home and successfully preserved the gene.

Everything went smoothly, but this simple step cost at least 20,000 yuan at a pet cloning agency.

After the cells are extracted, the samples are used to establish somatic cell lines in the laboratory.

This step was quite difficult. He consulted many biohackers and even found an old classmate who studied biology for advice.

At the same time, he also contacted a caring aunt nearby who adopted stray cats to finance sterilization and cat food in exchange for the qualification to collect oocytes from stray female cats in heat.

Of course, considering that pet cloning may cause harm to the surrogate mother, out of compensation, he planned to adopt the surrogate mother cat after the cloning was successful.

Moreover, he only plans to use one surrogate mother for each embryo transfer, trying to minimize the harm to the stray female cats.

Pet cloning currently has no legal risks, but it will face moral pressure.

Because the technology of cloning pets such as cats and dogs has been overcome, the efficiency of cloning is also related to the quality and proficiency of technicians. If the technology is not mature or proficient enough, a lot of experiments will be needed in the early stage, which will waste a lot of manpower and material costs.

This naturally includes the input of experimental animals.

To successfully clone a cat, workers need to prepare dozens of cloned embryos and implant them into several surrogate female cats before finally successfully cloning a cat.

This huge waste of experimental animals has also attracted strong resistance from animal protection activists.

They believe that the commercialization of pet cloning is entirely to satisfy people's selfish desires.

Consumers want an identical pet, but countless experimental animals are sacrificed behind the scenes.

Not only are these experimental animals given hormones, but they also have to undergo surgeries again and again, and they also have to endure endless cage life.

All of this is unacceptable to animal rights activists.

Li Chengmin is not technically proficient enough, so he can only find other ways to practice as much as possible, such as practicing on mice first.

As a senior cat slave who loves cats and dogs, he cannot completely sacrifice many experimental animals for his own selfish desires. He can only work hard to hone his skills and minimize harm to cats.

Fortunately, he works alone and has much more freedom than company staff, so he can make compromises in this regard.

In this way, it also aroused confusion and doubts from the caring aunt next door.

"Young man, if you want to raise a cat, you can just adopt one. Why go to such trouble? There are so many stray cats now that you can't even adopt them. Why are you going to do cloning?"

"Is it worth spending so much effort?"

While accepting the cat food he sent with a smile on her face, the aunt shook her head and tortured her soul.

Li Chengmin was speechless. It was difficult for him to explain all this to his aunt, so he had to smile bitterly.

"Auntie, just think of this as an obsession."

"If I don't do it, I will be sad. If I do it, it will make me happy, and it will be worth it."

The aunt muttered and walked away, as if she couldn't understand, and she also felt that something was not normal about him.

About two months later, the cell line was successfully established, and Li Chengmin started cloning.

After overcoming a series of difficulties, he finally constructed three cloned embryos and transplanted them into a surrogate female cat.

The next step is to see if the embryo can survive.

Under current technical means, the embryo survival rate is not high, about 10%, and only one in 10 embryos can survive.

Therefore, some companies that undertake pet cloning in large quantities will raise their own surrogate mothers. Because pets come into heat at different times, only if there are enough mothers can they ensure that there are enough eggs every month to meet the order demand.

Not only that, when a pet cloning agency signs a contract with a customer, it usually sets a delivery time. In order to avoid accidents that affect order delivery, the agency will find multiple mothers for conception at the beginning to increase the success rate, which requires a sufficient quantity.

experimental dog.

Li Chengmin only has one order for himself, and he does not have multiple surrogate mothers to use.

After all, the caring aunt next door couldn't tolerate him conducting experiments on many female cats over and over again.

His fault tolerance rate is not high, so he can only try to improve his technical level and improve the embryo survival rate as much as possible.

Unfortunately, luck did not favor him at the beginning, and the first embryo transplant was not successful.

After 20 days, the female cat still did not show pregnancy.

This was undoubtedly a huge blow to him.

After some examinations, he restarted the second transplant experiment.

This time, out of caution, he took the surrogate civet cat home and took care of it himself.

I cook my own cat meals every day, have enough canned snacks, and pamper the female cat to make her very comfortable.

Fortunately, it finally succeeded this time.

One month later, the female cat’s belly became obviously bulging.
To be continued...