Juice is a well-known dog who has starred in dozens of Chinese film and television productions. As he gets older and his successful career peaks, his master has one wish for him - to live on.
A dog adopted off the streets, nine year-old Juice—or "Guozhi" in Chinese— is unable to have babies. But his master, animal trainer He Jun, wants to continue his star dog's image by making a clone. "Juice himself is a piece of intellectual property with social influence. " said he.
To achieve that, He went to Sinogene, China's first biotech (生物技术)company to provide pet cloning services. Sinogene made headlines when it successfully cloned a gene-edited dog last year. A month later, it offered commercial cloning services. For at least 380, 000 yuan, pet owners can clone their pets. Songene's pet cloning business is in its initial stages, but the company plans to expand services to eventually include gene editing as more and more pet owners want their pets to accompany them for an even longer period of time.
China's biotech industry is growing rapidly and faces few regulatory barriers. Tin-Lap Lee, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said while China has regulations on the use of animals for lab research, there are no laws clearly covering animals cloning. "On the government side, the image of this cloning industry is very high-tech, " said Lee.
Juice's copy, "Little Juice" was born in mid-September and stayed with its surrogate mother (代理孕母) in Sinogene's lab for about a month. The puppy was later given to-He at a small ceremony at which the original Juice was present. While He has not announced Little Juice would start a career in show business, he sees lots of potential (潜力). "We believe he'll be even better than the older Juice. " He said.
