A member of the investigative panel that probed the fraud scandal of cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk has reaffirmed the world-class status of his team's technology for creating blastocysts.

The member on Thursday said only the team and the University of Newcastle in Britain possess the technology to produce blastocysts through somatic cell nuclear transfers, but the team was the first.

He urged recognition of the team's expertise in the technology as unique as written in the panel's final investigation report.

On Tuesday, the panel's chief Chung Myung-hee said it might be difficult to recognize the team's technical expertise as “unique or novel.”

The panel member, however, said Chung's remarks probably refer to the "squeezing" technique of enucleation that has long been used on animal eggs.

He added the panel did not conclude the cell line published in the 2004 Science paper as a parthenogenesis mutation, but simply raised the possibility.