The company has already received its first order from a U.S. woman who is ready to pay $150,000 to clone her pet pit bull terrier, Booger, who saved her life when another dog attacked her and ripped off her arm.
"A physically disabled woman named Bernann McKunney, living in the U.S. state of California, has asked RNL Bio to clone her dead dog," the Donga.com news portal quoted a company official as saying.
To clone the dog, scientists will use frozen cells, taken from the dead dog's ear tissue. The cells will later be impregnated into eight bitches, with a success rate of 1 in 4 dogs producing puppies.
The project, if successful, will be the first example of commercial dog cloning.
The RNL Bio will be in charge of business operations while the cloning itself will be performed by a research team of the Seoul National University, which produced the world's first cloned dog. The company expects to deliver a cloned puppy next February.
The RNL CEO Ra Jeong-chan is sure that commercial pet cloning has a great future.
"There are many people who want to clone their pet dogs in Western countries even at this high price," the Korea Times quoted him as saying.
Commercial dog cloning was originated in the U.S. in December 2004 when a cat called Nicky was cloned for $50,000 by the Genetic Savings & Clone company, which ran into bankruptcy in 2006, unable to create a viable commercial business.
