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Disease-causing variants of a large number of genes trigger inherited retinal degeneration leading to photoreceptor loss. Because cones are essential for daylight and central vision such as reading, mobility, and face recognition, this review focuses on a variety of animal models for cone diseases. The pertinence of using these models to reveal genotype/phenotype correlations and to evaluate ne...

Horizontal gene transfer by transposition has been widely used for transgenesis in prokaryotes. However, conjugation has been preferred for transfer of large transgenes, despite greater restrictions of host range. We examine the possibility that transposons can be used to deliver large transgenes to heterologous hosts. This possibility is particularly relevant to the expression of large seconda...

Gene therapy techniques are being developed as potential treatments for cardiovascular diseases. During the past decade, many gene transfer methods including viral transfer techniques have been developed, and some are being applied clinically in human gene therapy studies. Recently, we have developed a novel gene transfer method mediated by Hemagglutinating Virus of Japan (HVJ) liposome, with w...

Cell-mediated transgenesis, based on somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), provides the opportunity to shape the genetic make-up of cattle. Bovine primary fetal fibroblasts, commonly used cells for SCNT, have a limited lifespan, and complex genetic modifications that require sequential transfections can be challenging time and cost-wise. To overcome these limitations, SCNT is frequently used to...

The production of transgenic pigs using somatic cell nuclear transfer (scNT) has been widely described, but a technique for removing nontransfected donor cells and for creating different founder animals has not yet been fully elucidated. In this study, four different expression vectors (pBC1hEPO, pMARBC1hEPO, pBC1hEPOwpre and pMARBC1hEPOwpre) were compared to determine the highest transgene exp...

This review summarises recent advances in the field of transgenic goats for the purpose of producing recombinant proteins in their milk. Production of transgenic goats via pronuclear microinjection of DNA expression vectors has been the traditional method, but this results in low efficiencies. Somatic cell nuclear transfer has dramatically improved efficiencies in rates of transgenesis. Charact...

Molecular genetics and reproductive biology techniques enable the transfer of foreign DNA into mammals. Novel approaches to modify disease resistance or susceptibility in livestock are justified by economic and animal welfare concerns. Current research on the improvement of disease resistance by gene transfer focuses on three main strategies, as follows: a) somatic gene transfer, i.e., nucleic ...