The low full-term developmental efficiency of porcine somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos is mainly attributed to imperfect epigenetic reprogramming in the early embryos. However, dynamic expression patterns of histone methylation involved in epigenetic reprogramming progression during porcine SCNT embryo early development remain to be unknown. In this study, we characterized and compa...

Reproductive biotechnologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) enable improved reproductive efficiency of animals. However, the birth rate of in vitro-derived embryos still lags behind that of their in vivo counterparts. Thus, it is critical to develop an accurate evaluation and prediction system of embryo competence, both for commercial purposes and ...

This study was conducted to evaluate the preimplantation embryonic potential of adult somatic cells from an infertile man using an interspecies bioassay for quality control and also to create human embryos via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Skin tissue was biopsied from infertile man to obtain fibroblast cells. These cells were fused with both enucleated bovine oocytes obtained commercia...

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) may affect epigenetic mechanisms and alter the expression of genes related to embryo development and X chromosome inactivation (XCI). We characterized allele-specific expression of the X-linked gene monoamine oxidase type A (MAO-A) in the trophectoderm (TF) of embryos produced by SCNT. Total RNA was isolated from individual biopsies (N = 25), and the allele-...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of dehydroleucodine (DhL), a new drug isolated from a medicinal herb used in Argentina, for activation of bovine oocyte. Several DhL concentrations and exposure times after ionomycin (Io) treatment were tested. The optimal DhL treatment, found for parthenogenetic development, was employed to produce bovine embryos by intracytoplasmic sperm inj...

Transcription profiling of placentomes derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT, n = 20), in vitro fertilization (IVF, n = 9), and artificial insemination (AI, n = 9) at or near term development was performed to better understand why SCNT and IVF often result in placental defects, hydrops, and large offspring syndrome (LOS). Multivariate analysis of variance was used to distinguish the ...

Background Despite successful cloning of many mammalian species, the cloning efficiency is extremely low compared to that of IVF raising the possibility of the existence of epigenetic barrier preventing successful cloning. MaterialsAndMethods Using comparative transcriptome analysis comparing transcriptomes of IVF and SCNT embryos and that of donor cells, we identified epigenetic barrier and fi...

Background: Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) provides an appealing alternative for the conservation and improvement of genetic material of unique and endangered species. An important prerequisite for successful SCNT is the availability of good quality donor cells, as normal embryo development is dependent upon proper reprogramming of the donor genome so that embryonic genes can be appropria...

Many different approaches have been developed to improve the efficiency of animal cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), one of which is to modify histone acetylation levels using histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) such as trichostatin A (TSA). In the present study, we examined the effect of TSA on in vitro development of porcine embryos derived from SCNT. We found that TSA treatm...