%0 Journal Article
%T Donor-host mitochondrial compatibility improves efficiency of bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer
%A Zhong-hai Yan
%A Yi-ye Zhou
%A Jing Fu
%A Fei Jiao
%A Lei-wen Zhao
%A Peng-fei Guan
%A Shu-zhen Huang
%A Yi-tao Zeng
%A Fanyi Zeng
%J BMC Developmental Biology
%D 2010
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-213x-10-31
%X We investigated whether the in vitro development of reconstructed bovine embryos produced by SCNT would be influenced by mtDNA haplotype compatibility between the oocytes and donor cells. Embryos from homotype A-A or B-B showed significantly higher developmental ability at blastocyst stages than the heterotype A-B or B-A combinations. Post-implantation development ability, pregnancy rate up to day 90 of gestation, as well as percent of term births were higher in the homotype SCNT groups than in the heterotype groups. In addition, homotype and heterotype SCNT embryos showed different methylation patterns of histone 3-lysine 9 (H3K9) genome-wide and at pluripotency-related genes (Oct-4, Sox-2, Nanog).Both histone and DNA methylation show that homotype SCNT blastocysts have a more successful epigenetic asymmetry pattern than heterotype SCNT blastocysts, which indicates more complete nuclear reprogramming. This may result from variability in their epigenetic patterns and responses to nuclear reprogramming. This suggests that the compatibility of mtDNA haplotypes between donor cells and host oocytes can significantly affect the developmental competence of reconstructed embryos in SCNT, and may include an epigenetic mechanism.Although nuclear transfer has been applied to a range of species [1], embryos generated via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) generally have low developmental competency and many abnormalities occur in the course of development. The underlying mechanisms for these limitations are unclear. Many recent studies on nuclear transfer embryos revealed that gene expression patterns in the cloned embryo, fetus and placenta were abnormal [2] and suggested that these commonly observed abnormalities were attributed to inefficient or incomplete "nuclear reprogramming". It is generally accepted that in nuclear transfer embryos, the reprogramming of gene expression is linked to epigenetic mechanisms and does not involve modification of DNA sequences. Epigenetic
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-213X/10/31