A number of animals with genetically identical appearance can be produced by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). From current advancement of SCNT and molecular techniques, production of a transgenic animal becomes easier. Although cloning efficiency in goat is low, the ability to propagate genetically identical animals, with a gene or genes of interest, would be important for increasing produ...

This study was performed to examine whether adult fibroblast cells can be manipulated genetically and whether clonal lines derived from those cells can support embryonic development. A primary adult cell line was established from the ear of an aged cow. Adult cells with a plasmid containing the enhancer green fluorescence protein (EGFP) gene, and non-transfected cells were used for cloning. Gre...

The ability to produce transgenic animals through the introduction of exogenous DNA has existed for many years. However, past methods available to generate transgenic animals, such as pronuclear microinjection or the use of embryonic stem cells, have either been inefficient or not available in all animals. More recently, somatic cell nuclear transfer has provided a method to create transgenic a...

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) has been a well-known technique for decades and widely applied to generate identical animals, including ones with genetic alterations. The system has been demonstrated successfully in zebrafish. The elaborated requirements of SCNT, however, limit reproducibility of the established model to a few groups in zebrafish research community. In this chapter, we met...

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) offers great potential for developing better animal models of human disease. The domestic ferret (Mustela putorius furo) is an ideal animal model for influenza infections and potentially other human respiratory diseases such as cystic fibrosis, where mouse models have failed to reproduce the human disease phenotype. Here, we report the successful production ...

To maintain cell lineage, cells develop a mechanism which can transmit the gene activity information to the daughter cells. In mitosis, TBP (TATA-binding protein), a transcription factor which belongs to TFIID was associated with M phase chromosomes and was proved to be a bookmark for cellular memory. Although previous work showed that TBP was dispensable for mouse oocyte maturation and early e...

The ability to reprogram somatic cell nuclei back into a pluripotent epigenetic state provides exciting new possibilities for in vitro research and cell transplantation therapy. There has been a significant quantity of recent research studies demonstrating that this epigenetic reprogramming process is possible with human and non-human primate somatic cells. In this review, various methodologies...

The majority of cloned animals derived by nuclear transfer from somatic cell nuclei develop to the blastocyst stage but die after implantation. Mouse embryos that lack an Oct4 gene, which plays an essential role in control of developmental pluripotency, develop to the blastocyst stage and also die after implantation, because they lack pluripotent embryonic cells. Based on this similarity, we po...