Dongjun Liu
The Key Laboratory of Mammal Reproductive Biology and Biotechnology,
College of Life Sciences, Inner Mongolia University

The efficiency of donor cell types in cashmere goat somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is undefined. In this study, SCNT was performed using caprine fetal fibroblast cells (CFCs), caprine ear fibroblast cells (CEFCs) and transgenic caprine fetal fibroblast cells (TCFCs) as donor cells to compare the influences of cell type, transgene and sex of nuclear donor fibroblast cells on the SCNT efficiency including fusion and cleavage rates of reconstructed embryos and the birth, postnatal survival and mortality rates of cloned kids. A total of 4,943 reconstructed embryos were obtained. Among them, 3,949 embryos were fused, and 3,737 embryos were cultured in vitro leading to a total of 3,094 cleavage embryos. Furthermore, embryo transplantation analysis was conducted on 1,873 cloned embryos with relatively normal morphology. 368 recipient goats were transplanted and 48 goats were born, of which, 35 goats survived. The SCNT efficiency of CFCs cell-derived embryos was higher than that of CEFCs-derived embryos, and the cloning efficiency of non-transgenic cloned embryo was higher than that of transgenic cloned embryos. Also, the SCNT efficiency of male cell-derived embryos was higher than that of female cell-derived embryos. These data indicate that donor cashmere goat cell type is an important factor in determining SCNT efficiency.