Skin as Nuclear Transfer Donor

New York, NY -

Various methods of nuclear transfer cloning are known in the art. However, what is interesting is the actual optimal donor cell to be used for the highest efficiency, since in general the process of nuclear transfer cloning is considered to be generally inefficient.

In a recent paper (Li et al. Mice cloned from skin cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Feb 13;) the efficiency of cloning of mice was assessed using various skin cell components as nuclear transfer donors. It was found that keratinocyte stem cells, as well as embryonic keratinocytes and cumulus cells all were capable of inducing a similar rate of efficiency of cloning (about 6% per transferred blastocytes. Additionally, it was found that keratinocyte stem cells were more effective than transit amplifying keratinocyte cells.

These data sugges that various types of skin cells are suitable for nuclear transfer donors. This is interesting since one day the goal will be to generated ES cells from nuclear transfer on an individual basis so as to be able to generate new autologous organs.