Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering (Feb 2019)

Factors influencing the somatic cell nuclear transfer efficiency in pigs

  • Yong JIN, Manling ZHANG, Xinrong JU, Shuang LIANG, Qiang XIONG, Lihua ZHAO, Xiaowei NIE, Daorong HOU, Qiang LIU, Junzheng WANG, Chenyu WANG, Xiaokang LI, Lining ZHANG, Xiaorui LIU, Ying WANG, Haiyuan YANG, Yifan DAI, Rongfeng LI

DOI
https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2018220
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 1
pp. 73 – 80

Abstract

Read online

Using a data set from our laboratory, we assessed the effects of several factors on pig cloning efficiency. The results demonstrated that cells at high confluence (>90%) used as donor cell resulted in higher pregnancy rate, delivery rate and overall cloning efficiency (number of live offspring born per reconstructed embryo transferred to recipients) compared with the cells at 60% to 79% confluence and 80% to 89% confluence. Cells with four, five and six passages compromised the pregnancy and delivery rates compared with first passage cells. The number of blastocysts transferred by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) did not significantly affect the cloning efficiency, but transfer of blastocyst derived from in vitro culture 5 d after SCNT achieved a significantly higher pregnancy rate compared with one to two cell SCNT embryos from overnight culture. The highest pregnancy rate, delivery rate and the largest litter size were obtained when Bama Miniature pig fibroblasts were used as donor cells and Landrace/Yorkshire hybrid gilts were used as recipients. Recipients treated with chemicals for estrus synchronization had higher pregnancy rates compared with untreated recipients. Our data might be helpful for improving SCNT efficiency in pigs.

Keywords