Project description:Since the first cloned animal Dolly Sheep was successfully created by using somatic cell nuclear transfer(SCNT) technique. It has become an irreplaceable tool to understand nuclear reprogramming and totipotency and holds huge potentials for regenerative medicine. However, extremely poor development rate of SCNT embryos indicates it is still questionable. The nature of reprogramming oocyte factors and their mechanism of action remain largely unknown.It is evident that the major barrier that hinders the developing iSCNT embryo mainly appears at the time of embryonic genome activation (EGA), which primarily occurs at the eight-cell stage in mammalian. The interspecies somatic cell nuclear transfer (iSCNT) is desired model for nuclear reprogramming research and a powerful tool for discovering the master genome activation genes. In this study, a valuable transcriptome recourse of iSCNT embryos was established, which derived from more than 2000 clone embryos of four different inter-family donor cells. Based on weighted gene co-expression network (WGCNA) approach, we provide an extensive transcriptome analysis of differentially expressed genes(DEG) for iSCNT embryos. The total gene expression patterns of different iSCNT embryos were discussed. 26 cell-specific modules with were identified, and those module significance and GO enriched categories were analyzed. The regulatory pathways of reprogramming barriers were further enriched. As master genome trigger genes, the transcripts related to TFIID subunit, RNA polymerase and Mediator were incomplete activated in iSCNT embryos. This indicated that pioneer factors, present in the cytoplasm of the oocyte, were failed to bind the sequence target on the heterology nuclear genome. This genomic incompatibility between the nuclear donor cell and the cytoplast may be as a major contributing factor causes the developmental failure of iSCNT cloned embryos. This study demonstrates that the iSCNT embryos undergoes only partial or incomplete reprogramming at eight-cell stage in mammalian. Our results offered convincing evidence that the abnormal expression of key master pathways may be caused the embryo developmental block of cloning embryo. This work will contribute to a better understanding of the molecular interaction between nuclear–cytoplasmic interaction and provides insight into the molecular determinants of nuclear reprogramming, human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-based therapies and rescuing highly endangered species.

Project description:Although somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) cloning is more efficient in bovine than in all other species tested so far, there is a high rate of pregnancy failure that has been linked to structural and functional abnormalities of the placenta. We tested the hypothesis that these changes may originate from disturbed embryo-maternal interactions in the pre-implantation period. Therefore, we evaluated the transcriptome response of the endometrium to SCNT embryos (produced from five different donor cell cultures) as compared to embryos derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF). SCNT embryos and IVF embryos were cultured under identical conditions to the blastocyst stage (Day 8) and transferred to recipients. The recipients were slaughtered at day 18 of pregnancy and the uterus was recovered. Pregnancy was verified by the presence of at least one normally developed embryo. Transcriptome profiling of endometrium samples using a custom cDNA microarray covering transcripts expressed in the endometrium and/or oviduct epithelium revealed 58 transcripts that were differently abundant between endometrium samples from SCNT vs. IVF pregnancies. Prominent examples are NR2F2 (encoding the orphan nuclear receptor COUP-TFII) and GJA1 (encoding connexin 43). Both transcripts are known to play important roles in placentation and were significantly less abundant in endometrium from SCNT vs. IVF pregnancies. These findings suggest that placental failure in bovine clone pregnancies may originate from abnormal embryo-maternal communication already in the pre- or peri-implantation period. Endometrium transcriptome profiles may serve as a novel readout to evaluate SCNT embryos for their ability to induce pregnancy with a functional placenta. Keywords: response to different embryos Nineteen German Fleckvieh (Simmental) heifers were slaughtered at day 18 of pregnancy. Cycle-synchronized recipient heifers received either IVP or SCNT embryos at day 7 of the estrous cycle. Animals were slaughtered at day 18. Endometrial (intercaruncular) tissue samples were obtained from 10 pregnant animals after transfer of IVP embryos and from 9 pregnant animals after transfer of SCNT embryos.

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Expression data from somatic cell nuclear transfer bovine embryo

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