The University of Pittsburgh has announced that it is currently investigating the authenticity of Hwang Woo-suk's thesis on the world's first cloned dog.

The university’s Medical Center spokeswoman, Jane Duffield, told Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency Thursday that the verification process was inevitable given that University of Pittsburgh scientist Gerald Schatten was one of the co-authors of the thesis.

The announcement comes one day after the British science journal Nature said it had begun verifying the authenticity of the paper in question, which it had published in August.

The magazine said it is conducting a mitochondria test on the DNA of the dog, Snuppy, to determine the validity of claims by U.S.-based Advanced Cell Technology that Hwang could have split an embryo and created a twin dog rather than producing a clone.

In August, Hwang and his team unveiled a five-month-old hound whose genes they said came from a single cell taken from the ear of an adult Afghan rather than the egg and sperm of a mother and father.