Principles of Cloning is a book published in 2002 edited by Dr. Robert Lanza, Dr. Keith Campbell, Dr. Michael West, and Dr. Jose Cibelli. This post has some notes from the book.
• Genetically identical (cloned) mice were produced by injecting inner cell mass cells into enucleated zygotes.
• Rabbits have been cloned using blastomeres obtained from 8-cell embryos.
• Cloned piglets have been produced following injection of somatic cells into enucleated oocytes.
• Dolly was a viable cloned lamb resulting from a cultured cell derived from somatic mammary gland cells harvested from an ewe.
• Mammalian embryos obtained by nuclear transfer from somatic and ES cell nuclei display aberrant DNA methylation patterns during early development.
• Viable cloned sheep, cows, pigs, goats, cats, and mice have been produced through the direct introduction of somatic nuclei into enucleated oocytes.
• Cloned goats have been generated by introducing somatic nuclei into activated oocytes.
• Nuclear transfer procedures in sheep and cattle often utilize simultaneous fusion and activation.
• 5% to 25% of mouse blastocysts generated by nuclear transfer with embryonic stem cell or blastomere nuclei survived until birth.
• Experiments using differentiated mature B and T lymphocytes demonstrate that even highly differentiated cells can give rise to embryonic stem cell lines and to cloned mice after nuclear transfer.
• Most cloned mice derived from five different F1 embryonic stem cell lines survived to adulthood.
• Most embryonic stem cell-tetraploid mouse neonates derived from six F1 ES cell lines developed into fertile adults.
• Epigenetic abnormalities in cloned animals may be the cause of obesity and shortened life span seen in some cloned mice.
• Studies have shown that telomere length in cloned neonatal cattle is nearly identical to controls.
• Research of gene expression in neonatal mice found that epigenetic abnormalities were present in the embryonic stem cells prior to nuclear transfer and were not likely a direct result of the cloning procedure.
• Research in sheep and mice suggests that prolonged in vitro culture of donor cell populations prior to nuclear transfer may increase the likelihood of neonatal complications in cloned offspring.
• A piezoelectric inertial impact device can be used for mouse nuclear transfer.
• Embryo cloning using nuclear transfer produced thousands of calves in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
• Mice have been cloned using a piezo-activated NT method with cumulus cells, tail-tip cells, Sertoli cells, and embryonic stem cells.
• Cattle have been cloned from peripheral blood leukocytes.
• Methods for donor nucleus delivery in mouse cloning by NT include fusion with Sendai virus, electrical fusion, conventional microinjection, or piezo-actuated microinjection.
• Behavioral parameters such as home cage activity, the Morris water maze test, the Krushinsky test, and motor tests show no differences between adult cloned mice and control mice.
• Research found that a relatively large 22 hour asynchrony was one of the major factors in successfully producing the first somatic cell cloned rabbits.
• Techniques from in human fertility clinics that have been successfully used in nonhuman primates include superovulation, offspring derived after transfer of embryos produced by in vitro fertilization, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, embryo cryopreservation, and artificial insemination with fresh and frozen semen.
• Five healthy cloned transgenic goats were produced using the AT-III fetal cell line and oocytes aspirated from either follicle-stimulating hormone-stimulated or nonstimulated ovaries.
• Transgenic cloned goats were generated by introducing the transgene into fetal cells using a lipid-mediated transfection protocol.
