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Study shows Hwang Woo-suk's 2004 stem cell study results were false
By Tony Chang
SEOUL, Aug. 3 (Yonhap) -- A team of U.S. and South Korean researchers said Friday they have reconfirmed that a stem cell line created by discredited cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk in 2004 was not in fact what it was originally claimed to be.
Hwang, once considered a national hero, was tried on charges of fraud and violating bioethics laws after his team was found in January 2006 to have submitted faked data for embryonic stem cell research to two scientific journals.
The team, led by Kim Ki-tae, a researcher at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in the United States, said they have developed a way to differentiate stem cells created from parthenogenesis and somatic cell cloning.
There has been mounting controversy over the nature of the stem cell line unveiled in 2004, dubbed the NT-1, among cloning scientists, since an investigative panel of Seoul National University, where Hwang once worked, said that the cell seems to have been created through parthenogenesis, the development of an ovum without any genetic contribution from a male.
Prosecutors said scientists should verify the claim, while Hwang maintained his position in the U.S. Journal Science that the NT-1 was created through somatic cloning, or through cloned embryos.
Through a method involving DNA sequence analysis of mouse stem cells created both from parthenogenesis and somatic cell cloning, the team came to the conclusion that the NT-1 was not created by cloning somatic cells as Hwang has insisted, or through what is known as "unisexual reproduction."
They later conducted similar research on a remaining human embryo, creating stem cell lines through parthenogenesis, and compared them with a DNA sequence analysis of NT-1. Cloned stem cells made from parthenogenesis from the mouse and the remaining human embryo showed a closely similar DNA sequence to that of the NT-1, according to the team.
George Daley, a professor at the U.S. cancer center who oversaw the study, said that the NT-1 was confirmed to have been created through parthenogenesis.
The team's research was published in the latest edition of the U.S. Journal Cell and is the first independently published study concerning the veracity of Hwang's work.
odissy@yna.co.kr
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