Advances in somatic cell reprogramming: Applications in regenerative biomedicine and agriculture

Abstract

Dolly the sheep (Wilmut et al in Nature 385:810–813, [1]), the world’s first mammal to be cloned in 1995 from a somatic cell was the greatest scientific achievement of the 20 century, which fundamentally changed the basic knowledge of biologists for somatic cells. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka made a groundbreaking discovery that adult somatic cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent cells by the introduction of four pluripotent genes into somatic cells—so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells (Takanashi and Yamanaka in Cell 385:810–813, [2]). Those discoveries have opened promising in the research and applications of genomic reprogramming for regenerative biomedicine, biopharmaceutical, stem cell therapy, bio-organ, conservation of the rare and endangered animals, development of transgenic animals for breeding new animal varieties, etc. … Currently, there are three basic methods to reprogram somatic cells into totipotent stem cells or pluripotent stem cells: the first method is somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) by injection of a somatic cell into an enucleated oocyte in order to produce totipotent cell (cloned animals) (Wakayama et al in Nature 394:369–374, [3]), the second is fusion of somatic cell with embryonic stem cells, and the third method is introducing 2 to 4 pluripotent genes, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-MyC into somatic cell (Takanashi and Yamanaka in Cell 385:810–813, [2]). Recently, we found that treatment of somatic cells with germinal vesicle (GV) oocytes extracts could reprogram somatic cells to stem cells, we named these cells “gviPS” Cells (Bui et al in Development 141:2235–2244, [4]). In the four methods listed above, only SCNT method can reprogram somatic cell into full-term development (offspring), also known as cloning animals. In this presentation we will focus on the most advanced technology in the world and the latest research technologies in animal cloning and the applicability of those technologies in medicine, recombinant human protein applications in pharmaceuticals, and in agriculture. Besides, we will discuss the latest methods that our team has achieved in 20 years of combined 4 key biotechnology 21st century animal cloning techniques re-cell differentiation, gene transfer in higher animals, biotechnology and modern breeding applications in medicine and agriculture.