Epigenetic reprogramming and nuclear transfer

Nuclear transfer, also referred to as cloning, attracted public attention when the first mammal, the sheep Dolly, was cloned from an adult cell. In this review, we highlight some of the milestones reached in the 50 years following the first nuclear transplantations in frogs. We also address the problems associated with nuclear transfer and provide an survey on current stem-cell technology. In the long term, nuclear transfer could be used to generate customized embryonic stem cells, which would be invaluable to medical research and patient therapy.