Efficiency of Ovine Fibroblast or Cumulus Cells for Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer in Sheep

Despite remarkable progresses have been achieved in the field of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) there is little information regarding the effect of donor cell type on the efficiency mammalian somatic cell cloning in vitro. This study compared in vitro developmental competency of sheep enucleated oocytes reconstructed with either fibroblast or cumulus cells. Adult fibroblast cells were taken from skin biopsies of one male and one female adult sheep. Cumulus cells were harvested from the same female sheep. Direct whole cell injection procedure was used for embryo reconstitution. Activated reconstructs were cultured in TCM+10%FCS medium up to days 7 post activation whereas in vitro fertilized oocytes served as control. Although the rate of day 7 blastocyst formation in cumulus donor cells (19.7%) were greater than the male and female fibroblast donor cells (17.5% and 15.7% respectively) these differences were not significant. Control group on the other hand induced significantly greater blastocyst rate (29.7%) rather than all the three treatment groups. Both of cumulus and fibroblast can be used as donor cell for ovine somatic cell nuclear transfer. Since no significant difference was observed in term of blastocyst rates between the three SCNT groups therefore concluding donor cell type has no significant effect on the overall efficiency of in vitro production of cloned sheep blastocyst.