Mouse embryos and chimera cloned from neural cells in the postnatal cerebral cortex.
Cloning of mice has been achieved by transferring nuclei of various types of somatic cell nuclei into enucleated oocytes. However, all attempts to produce live cloned offspring using the nuclei of neurons from adult cerebral cortex have failed. Previously we obtained cloned mice using the nuclei of neural cells collected from fetal cerebral cortex. Here, we attempted to generate cloned mice using differentiated neurons from the cerebral cortex of postnatal (day 0-4) mice. Although we were unable to obtain live cloned pups, many fetuses reached day 10.5 days of development. These fetuses showed various abnormalities such as spherical omission of the neuroepithelium, collapsed lumen of neural tube, and aberrant expressions of marker proteins of neurons. We produced chimeric mice in which some hair cells and kidney cells were originated from differentiated neurons. In chimeric fetuses, LacZ-positive donor cells were in all three germ cell layers. However, chimeras with large contribution of donor-derived cells were not obtained. These results indicate that nuclei of differentiated neurons have lost their developmental totipotency. In other words, the conventional nuclear transfer technique does not allow nuclei of differentiated neurons to undergo complete genomic reprogramming required for normal embryonic development.
Department of Physiological Sciences, Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Osaka, Japan.
Hatsune
H
Makino
Yukiko
Y
Yamazaki
Takahiro
T
Hirabayashi
Ryosuke
R
Kaneko
Shun
S
Hamada
Yoshimi
Y
Kawamura
Tomoharu
T
Osada
Ryuzo
R
Yanagimachi
Takeshi
T
Yagi
D000818:Animals; D002467:Cell Nucleus / Q000378:metabolism; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000166:cytology*; D002678:Chimera; D019976:Cloning, Organism / Q000379:methods*; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000378:metabolism; D047108:Embryonic Development; D005260:Female; D005697:Galactosides / Q000494:pharmacology; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D007211:Indoles / Q000494:pharmacology; D007763:Lac Operon; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008811:Mice, Inbred DBA; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D009432:Neural Crest / Q000166:cytology; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism; D009865:Oocytes / Q000378:metabolism; D013997:Time Factors
D005697:Galactosides; D007211:Indoles; C044888:5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl beta-galactoside