Can you guess what the best invention in the world was in 2005? No, it wasn’t a better or faster computer, or some gadget that makes things easier at our house or place of work. Not even close. Time magazine selected a dog as its “most amazing invention of 2005.” His name is Snuppy and he is the world’s first-ever cloned dog.

Snuppy is an Afghan dog that was created by a 45-man team of Korean scientists at Seoul National University (SNU) headed by the celebrated Hwang Woo-Suk. Born on April 24 last year, Snuppy got his name from a combination of SNU and “puppy.” He is only the second mammal to ever be cloned in the world after “Dolly the Sheep,” born on July 17, 1996. Dolly died in 2003 after only six years due to non-cloning related conditions, a panel of medical scientists concluded afterwards. There was some speculation that Dolly may have suffered from premature again because of shortened “telomeres” in her cells that were passed on from her parent, who was six years old when the genetic material was taken from her. Some scientists have said that Dolly may have been genetically six years old at birth, but this is unsupported scientifically.

Although he looks just as snuggly as any other Afghan hound, his conception was one for the books. Snuppy’s genes originated from a single cell derived from the ear of an adult Afghan and not from the traditional manner of combining the egg and sperm of a mother and father. From this single cell, scientists were able to create thousands of dog embryos. They transferred 1,095 of these dog embryos into 123 female dogs of different breeds, a painstakingly meticulous process that produced only three pregnancies among the lot. Of these three, one fetus was a miscarriage while one clone lasted three weeks before it was killed by pneumonia. Snuppy was the sole survivor. His presence was announced to the world in August 2005.

Snuppy’s birth brought great acclaim to Korea and to the team of scientists who created him. However, the euphoria was short-lived for Doctor Hwang as the Korean government later investigated him for irregularities in some of his cloning research and found that some of his findings were faked, especially in his experiments involving the creation of embryonic stem cells. First, it was discovered that several photos of supposedly different cells were actually photos of the same cell. Next, questions were raised about the similarities between DNA profiles of the cloned cells. Finally, on December 15 last year, the roof fell on Hwang when Roh Sung-Il, one of the members of Hwang’s team, revealed to media than nine of the eleven stem cell lines that the team supposedly created in one of his ground-breaking experiments had actually been faked. “Professor Hwang admitted to fabrication,” Roh said.

However, following an extensive investigation by the Seoul National University that involved DNA testing of Snuppy, it was confirmed without a doubt that Snuppy was a genuine clone of the DNA donor dog named Tei. His place in the history of medicine and science remains secure.

Another test that Snuppy has to pass now is the test of longevity. How long will the dog live and will his death be a “normal” one or one induced by cloning-related matters? Dolly the Sheep died a normal death after six years, and that’s the benchmark that Snuppy’s creators will want to surpass. Snuppy appeared prominently on Time magazine’s cover earlier this year. Incidentally, other inventions that made Time’s short list of great inventions in 2005 included a bicycle with a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell engine, a one-time use video camcorder, and a robotic cat that recognizes speech commands.