What if you have $150,000 in your pocket? You will probably buy a nice house, a luxurious car, some trendy gadgets and tour the Carribean on a grand holiday cruise. This is not the case, however, for a Californian woman who wants to spend the same amount to have her dead pet cloned in the world's first commercial dog cloning project, says the Times Online.

Bernann McKunney is willing to pay $150,000 to a South Korean company to recreate an exact replica of her pit bull terrier, Booger. She is said to have been particularly attached to her dog after it saved her life when she was attacked by another dog.

RNL Bio, based in Seoul, is set to work on the project using Booger's ear tissue, which was preserved by an American biotech firm before the animal died. The cloning will be done by a team of scientists from Seoul National University (SNU), which successfully created the world's first dog clone in 2005, an Afghan hound, Snuppy, who was named after SNU and puppy.

Dog cloning industry

According to BBC News, RNL Bio claims this is the first time a dog will be cloned commercially.

Ra-Jeong Chan, the company's chief executive, told the Korea times: “There are many people who want to clone their pet dogs in Western countries even at this high price.”

Meanwhile, marketing director Cho Seong-Ryul said the company's success rate for producing dogs was high with one out of every four surrogate mothers producing cloned puppies.

“The cost of cloning a dog may come down to less than $50,000 as cloning is becoming an industry,” Cho added.

RNL Bio expects more orders for pet clones over the next few years.

Cloning research fraud

Professor Lee Byeong-Chun will lead the team in charge of cloning Booger. He was formerly part of stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk's research team.

It can be recalled that most of Hwang's results on cloning human stem cells, initially hailed as breakthroughs in 2005, were found to be fake last year. Hwang is now on trial charged with fraud and embezzlement.

But Hwang and his team at SNU were successful in producing Snuppy, as confirmed by an investigation team to be the true duplicate of Tei, a three-year-old male Afghan hound.

Although Booger is the first canine to be cloned commercially, this is not the first time that a pet has been cloned for marketing purposes. In 2004, the California-based company Genetic Savings and Clone, produced the world's first commercially cloned cat priced at $50,000 for a north Texas woman. The now defunct firm had recreated Little Nicky from the DNA of a 17 year-old Maine Coon cat.