(Photo: VCG)

China's rising middle class, who tend to be tech-savvy and life-style-caring, are positively embracing services focused on genes, the basic biological unit of heredity, drawing the mysterious code of life closer to the general public.

Having completed the cloning of more than 20 pet dogs, Sinogene, a Beijing-based biotech company, has forecast its number of orders for cloning dogs to hit around 50 or even 100 this year, driven by the soaring demand from pet owners who want to place their emotional ties onto the cloned pets, once their favorite pets have died or perhaps got lost.

Mi Jidong, general manager of Sinogene, told the Global Times on Monday that most clients are female and are deeply attached to their pet companions. 

Embedded with the same DNA sequence as the original dog, the cloned one looks similar to the former, yet lacks the exact memories of the original, but this has met with huge controversy from netizens who questioned whether the procedure is actually ethical. 

The cloning services come at a price of 380,000 yuan ($56,101.8) per dog.

"We confine our cloning business only to animals, and we're expecting the first cloned cat to be born in the first half of this year," said Mi.

He added it usually takes around six months to deliver an order from extracting cells with complete DNA to handing a two-month old cloned pet to clients.

"Based on the increasing demand and our output capacity, I believe we can clone several hundred pets annually, in the next two to three years," said Mi.

Chinese own a total of 91.49 million pet dogs and cats, and the pet animal market size is estimated at 170.8 billion yuan in 2018, up 27 percent compared with the previous year. It is highly likely that the number will hit a record 200 billion yuan this year, according a report published by pet ownership website goumin.com in August 2018.

Easy bite of high tech

In addition to animal cloning, the genomic code has also found a commercial application in a newly emerging sector in China - direct-to-consumer (DTC) DNA testing, the sort of business that has been performed by US companies such as the leading consumer genetics and research company 23andMe Inc.

Zhu, a 26-year-old female who is living in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, told the Global Times on Monday that she had done a DNA test recently after the recommendation of her friend. "Unraveling the genetic code through an easy test is interesting and full of mystery for me," she said.

After placing an order online, Zhu quickly received a test kit from a Chinese start-up, which is focused on DTC genetic testing. "I only needed to spit into a test tube and then return it for genetic analysis. It cost only 600 yuan for the test."

"About 10 days later I got my genetic report, which shocked me a little as it shows, in the disease section, that it is highly likely for me to develop obesity, despite the fact that I have grown up as a very thin girl," Zhu noted.

Differing from professional and clinical testing of genes, at-home DTC gene tests, as Zhu has experienced, have been drawing more and more public attention over the last several years in China, as it has become available to average citizens. The gene-testing and the associated results usually cover such areas as ancestry, sports, skincare, nutrition, personality and health risks.

 Providers of such genetic testing services total about 200 in China, with start-ups being the majority in 2017, according to an industry report released by the Beijing-based research company Analysys in June last year.

The gene-testing market is expected to reach 65.95 billion yuan by 2022, while back in 2017, the figure was only 15.8 billion yuan, the report said.

 "However, there may be only a dozen companies dominating in the sector in 2018 after an industry shuffle took place," said Qu Jing, an industry analyst at Analysys.

Compared with professional genetic tests for medical purposes such as non-invasive pre-natal tests and tumor treatment, DTC genetic tests tend to lack sufficient scientific support and industry regulation, said experts.

Qu told the Global Times on Tuesday that a market standard for the DTC gene-testing sector has not yet been established. "As genome sequencing becomes more mature, different players may have their own point of view when conducting a test on the same item, which may lead to different interpretations of the results," she explained. 

However, as far as Qu is concerned, although DTC gene testing is not as "practical" as the professional tests, since it features areas of interest rather than data legibility but  it has played an important and active role in popularizing people's knowledge about genetics and life.

According to Zhu, the test results have some practical usage in her life despite the fact that she found it mainly entertaining. "For example, the report indicates that I have high ability regarding avoiding errors and resisting pressure, so I will give myself psychological hints when I meet with any such obstacles in my life," she explained.

Chinese consumers like Zhu are fascinated by genetic testing due to their curiosity in genetics, through which, they believe they can explain their identity - ancestral and genealogical origins, their personality traits, their mental and physical health as well as their future, according to Qu.

Chen Gang, CEO of Shenzhen-based WeGene, a start-up focused on the research of individual and group genome, said the willingness of Chinese consumers to experiment with such a high-tech health product, and to pay for it out of their pocket, is also driving the rising demand for genetic testing.

"The booming market is due to the fact that more and more Chinese consumers are beginning to pay attention to their inherited traits with their overall educational level and income level going up," Chen told the Global Times.

By the end of the 2017, there were about 300,000 Chinese consumers participating in DTC gene-testing activities, while the number is expected to reach 50 million by 2022, at which time the market value could reach 24.95 billion yuan, the Analysys report noted.

Challenges ahead

Compared with the US and Europe, China's personal genomics industry is still at an early stage, but it has enjoyed a rapid pace of development for the last five years, experts said.

"Patience in enhancing technological standards, services and research ability is badly needed to promote the sustainable development of the DTC gene-testing industry in China, providing a new driver for the country's large health market," Chen noted.

"We can see the gap between China and the developed countries, in terms of DTC genomic information analysis and interpretation, is quickly narrowing. Chinese companies can even leverage their obvious advantages in such aspects as optimized testing for East Asians and the buildup of third-party applications," said Chen.

According to Qu, capital won't pour into the industry as it has done the past few years. "The threshold of entering the sector is only going to become higher, while very few start-ups will survive and become industry leaders," she remarked.

In addition, China's DTC gene-testing providers should learn more from their US counterparts in developing their business model and enhancing the health guidance level via testing, Qu added.

On the other hand, the scope of personal DNA testing is far beyond technology and business - it also involves such issues as ethics, privacy and data protection, said Wei Wensheng, a Peking University biologist.

 "Additionally, the problem of data protection and privacy remain very challenging. For example, if an insurer obtains my genetic and health data, it may affect my insurance coverage," Wei told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Personal gene testing may be the future but the market needs to be cultivated, including  deciding which process, standardization and regulation will be necessary," said Wei.