CC for "Copy Cat" (born December 22, 2001), is a brown tabby and white domestic shorthair and the first cloned pet. CC's surrogate mother was a tabby, but her genetic donor, Rainbow, was a calico domestic shorthair. The difference in hair coloration between CC and Rainbow is due to epigenetic re-programming, which normally occurs in a fertilised embryo before implantation. In this case, the epigenetic reprogramming would have occurred during the ...
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CC for "Copy Cat" (born December 22, 2001), is a brown tabby and white domestic shorthair and the first cloned pet. CC's surrogate mother was a tabby, but her genetic donor, Rainbow, was a calico domestic shorthair. The difference in hair coloration between CC and Rainbow is due to epigenetic re-programming, which normally occurs in a fertilised embryo before implantation. In this case, the epigenetic reprogramming would have occurred during the clonal process. This means that CC is genetically identical to Rainbow but epigenetically and thus phenotypically different. The embryo that became CC was the only one of 87 embryos produced in this research project that developed into a full-term pregnancy after being transferred to surrogate mothers.
The research project that produced CC was known as "Operation CopyCat," and was part of a larger project (called Missyplicity) to clone a dog named Missy. Genetic Savings & Clone, which provided commercial gene banking and cloning services to...
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