SKorean wolf cloning team under investigation

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Seoul, Apr 9: South Korean scientists, disgraced for massive fraud in stem cell studies, are being investigated for possibly manipulating data in a paper on producing the world's first cloned wolves, officials today said.

''We will investigate suspected data inflation to increase the cloning success rate,'' Kuk Young, chief of Seoul National University's office of research affairs, told reporters.

The team, once led by Hwang Woo-suk that was also at the forefront of embryonic stem cell studies, is not being investigated for fraud in the actual wolf cloning.

Lee Byung-chun, a professor who helped lead the wolf cloning, has asked the periodical ''Cloning and Stem Cells'' to issue a correction on the paper, but denied data was intentionally massaged, Kuk said.

The team, which produced Snuppy the world's first cloned dog in 2005, last month showed off the two Korean wolves named Snuwolf and Snuwolffy that were born about a year and a half ago.

A member of the team, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that it had taken a long time to find a publisher because of the team's involvement in the previous fraud over stem cell research.

Hwang and other members have since left their posts at the university after his team fabricated data in two papers on human embryonic stem cells that have since been debunked.

Hwang is facing trial on fraud, embezzlement and violating the country's bioethics laws.

Independent testing did, however, confirm that Snuppy was a clone.

In December, the team said it had cloned three more Afghan hounds and improved the efficiency of its cloning methods.

Reuters

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