[Nuclear reprogramming of somatic nuclear transfer embryos]

Abstract

Although the cloned animals have been successfully generated in a number of mammalian species, there are still many problems about this technology. The developmental aberrancies include a high rate of abortion during early gestation and high rate of perinatal death. The main cause of these problems may be attributed to the epigenetic reprogramming of somatic donor genome. During mammalian embryonic development, DNA methylation is an essential process in the regulation of transcription. There are many aberrant methylation in various genomic regions of cloned embryos. The gene imprinting of cloned embryos are also abnormal.