management of mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) capabilities to differentiate into osteogenic and chondrogenic lineages would be of utmost importance for their future use in difficult to treat cases of destroyed bone and cartilage. thus, an understanding of the epigenetic mechanisms as important modulators of stem cell differentiation might be useful. epigenetic mechanism refers to a process that r...

Background: Since the sheep ‘Dolly’ was successfully cloned by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the inefficiency of SCNT cloning and abnormality of cloned animals have been a focus of considerable controversy. Oocyte quality has been shown to contribute to poor somatic cloning and cell reprogramming efficiency with many factors affecting oocyte quality and developmental potential. It has b...

Gene transfer in eukaryotic cells and organisms suffers from epigenetic effects that result in low or unstable transgene expression and high clonal variability. Use of epigenetic regulators such as matrix attachment regions (MARs) is a promising approach to alleviate such unwanted effects. Dissection of a known MAR allowed the identification of sequence motifs that mediate elevated transgene ex...

thyroid cancer, the most common endocrine malignancy worldwide, originates from follicular epithelial cells. it is classified as a well-differentiated thyroid carcinoma (wdtc), which includes both follicular (ftc) and papillary types (ptc), poorly differentiated thyroid carcinomas (pdtc), anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (atc), and/or arising from para-follicular calcitonin producing cells involve m...

Integrating and expressing stably a transgene into the cellular genome remain major challenges for gene-based therapies and for bioproduction purposes. While transposon vectors mediate efficient transgene integration, expression may be limited by epigenetic silencing, and persistent transposase expression may mediate multiple transposition cycles. Here, we evaluated the delivery of the piggyBac...

An efficient animal cloning technology would provide many new opportunities for livestock agriculture, human medicine, and animal conservation. Nuclear cloning involves the production of animals that are genetically identical to the donor cells used in a technique known as nuclear transfer (NT). However, at present it is an inefficient process: in cattle, only around 6% of the embryos transferr...

background: the homologous recombination (hr) is one of the conventional cloning methods for the production of recombinant dna. it is a quick method for in vivo dna cloning without using the high cost restriction enzymes. a few modifications in the cloning procedure can increase the efficiency of this method. m aterials and methods: in this study, effect of heating on the rate of the igg1 heavy...

DNA methylation is a major epigenetic modification in the mammalian genome that regulates crucial aspects of gene function. Mammalian cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) often results in gestational or neonatal failure with only a small proportion of manipulated embryos producing live births. Many of the embryos that survive to term later succumb to a variety of abnormalities that a...

Cloning of mammals by nuclear transfer (NT) results in gestational or neonatal failure with at most a few percent of manipulated embryos resulting in live births. Many of those that survive to term succumb to a variety of abnormalities that are likely due to inappropriate epigenetic reprogramming. Cloned embryos derived from donors, such as embryonic stem cells, that may require little or no re...

the molecular mechanisms of the fact that more than 50% of the individuals with the same genetic make up (e.g. identical twins in schizophrenia) do not show the same psychiatric phenotype remained undefined in psychiatry. this along with the failure to find responsible genes with major effects in psychiatric disorders and lack of consistency of genetic association studies led to the current una...