Fla. couple pick up their cloned yellow lab puppy

[January 29, 2009]  MIAMI (AP) -- A Boca Raton couple got a new dog, and it's just like their old dog. Not just the same breed and gender, but the same DNA. Nina and Edgar Otto picked up their cloned yellow lab puppy at the Miami International Airport Monday night.

Lancelot Encore was cloned from the DNA of the Ottos' late dog Lancelot, which died of cancer in January 2008.

Guessing that pet cloning would one day be possible, the Ottos had DNA samples of their dog frozen five years ago.

The Ottos paid $155,000 in a San Francisco biotech firm's dog-cloning auction last July.

BioArts International created Lancelot Encore in South Korea, where he was born 10 weeks ago. The Ottos say he's the first single-birth, commercially cloned puppy in the United States.

___

Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com/

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.