hankyoreh

An international science journal on Wednesday deleted a paper on wolf cloning by South Korean researchers from its Web site amid scrutiny of the paper over alleged data fabrication.

In the paper published in the March edition of Cloning and Stem Cells, a team of researchers at Seoul National University led by Lee Byeong-chun and Shin Nam-sik said it cloned two female wolves, named Snuwolf and Snuwolffy, in October 2005 for the first time in the world.

The journal also posted a notice on its Internet site, saying it will await the outcome of the investigation before deciding on any action.

Lee was a key member of the team led by disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk that produced the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, earlier that year.

Hwang and Lee were put on trial following the discovery that their research papers on human stem cells contained fabricated data. Their work on dog cloning, however, was confirmed to be genuine and successful.

The university's Research Integrity Committee began Monday its probe of the allegation that the team intentionally used erroneous data to inflate their claims.

The team is also suspected of incorrectly arranging numbers in a table analyzing the mitochondrial DNA sequence of the cloned wolves and their surrogate mother dogs and of failing to acknowledge previous research on wolf cloning.

On Tuesday, the university delivered blood and cell samples from three wolves -- the one from which eggs were taken and the two clones -- as well as from one of the two dogs from which eggs were removed -- to an outside organization for analysis.

The outcome of the analysis is expected in the middle of this month.
Seoul, April 11 (Yonhap News)