Despite the extensive research efforts over the past 25 years that have focused on HIV, there is still no cure for AIDS. However, tremendous progress in the understanding of the structure and biology of the HIV virus led to the development of safe and potent HIV-based transgene delivery vectors. These genetic vehicles are referred to as lentiviral vectors. They appear to be better suited for pa...

This dialogue was held between the Guest Editors of the Special Issue on "Plant Transgenesis" of the Int. J. Dev. Biol. and Marc Van Montagu. Research in the group of Marc Van Montagu and Jeff Schell in the 1970s was essential to reveal how the phytopathogenic bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens transfers DNA to host plants to cause crown gall disease. Knowledge of the molecular mechanism under...

Though horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is widespread, genes and taxa experience biased rates of transferability. Curiously, independent transmission of homologous DNA to archaea, bacteria, eukaryotes, and viruses is extremely rare and often defies ecological and functional explanations. Here, we demonstrate that a bacterial lysozyme family integrated independently in all domains of life across d...

Nuclear transfer (NT) is a procedure by which genetically identical individuals can be created. The technology of pig somatic NT, including in vitro maturation of oocytes, isolation and treatment of donor cells, artificial activation of reconstructed oocytes, embryo culture and embryo transfer, has been intensively studied in recent years, resulting in birth of cloned pigs in many labs. While i...

Previous studies have established that gene transfer into myocardial cells in vivo is detectable after direct injection of plasmid DNA. Recently, adenovirus vectors have been shown to provide an efficient method for gene transfer into a wide range of tissues. Therefore, this study sought to assess the efficiency and stability of adenovirus-mediated gene transfer into myocardium and to compare t...

objective: β-thalassemia is caused by absence or reduction of β-globin chain synthesis. one of the effective therapeutic methods for this disease can be gene therapy by viral vectors. the capacity of lentiviral vectors is approximately 8 kb, we designed a 6 kb construct containing mini lcr and β-globin gene instead of lcr region. the aim of this study is to make a recombinant lentiviruses conta...

Sperm mediated gene transfer can be an inexpensive and simple method in animal transgenesis; however its efficiency is poor, mainly due to the spermatozoa’s lesser uptake of exogenous DNA. In the present study, the effects of lipofection and other augmentation techniques, such as sperm freezing and spermatozoa treatment with triton X100 and DMSO, on exogenous DNA uptake by sheep spermatozoa and...

Previous studies have established that gene transfer into myocardial cells in vivo is detectable after direct injection of plasmid DNA. Recently, adenovirus vectors have been shown to provide an efficient method for gene transfer into a wide range of tissues. Therefore, this study sought to assess the efficiency and stability of adenovirus-mediated gene transfer into myocardium and to compare t...

Gene therapy is an active field that has progressed rapidly into clinical trials in a relatively short time. The key to success for any gene therapy strategy is to design a vector able to serve as a safe and efficient gene delivery vehicle. This has encouraged the development of nonviral DNA-mediated gene transfer techniques such as liposomes. Many liposome-based DNA delivery systems have been ...

OBJECTIVES The Streptomyces phage phiC31 integrase offers a sequence-specific method of transgenesis with a robust long-term gene expression. PhiC31 has been successfully developed in a variety of tissues and organs for purpose of in vivo gene therapy. The objective of the present experiment was to evaluate PhiC31-based site-specific transgenesis system for production of transgenic bovine embry...