Comparison of the Growth Performances of Offspring Produced by a Pair of Cloned Cattle and Their Nuclear Donor Animals

Abstract

Abstract. In the present study, the growth performance of a calf produced by mating a somatic cell cloned dam and sire was compared with that of its full siblings produced by mating the cattle used as nuclear donors for the cloned animals. The somatic cell cloned dam and sire were derived from cultured cumulus cells and ear cells, respectively. The cloned dam was artificially inseminated with semen from the cloned sire. A female calf was produced that was reared under general group feeding conditions. The calf was subjected to a clinical examination and to hematology, serum biochemistry, and telomere length analyses; all of these tests indicated that the calf was normal. The growth characteristics (body weight and shoulder height) of the calf fell within the range of the full siblings of the same sex produced by mating the animals used as the nuclear donors of clones. These findings suggest that the same breeding performance is expected from mating a cloned dam and sire as from mating the animals used as nuclear donors for the clones. Our previous study clearly showed that semen from a cloned bull could be used successfully for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and artificial insemination (AI) [6]. The progeny of the cloned bull, which were produced using non-cloned cows, were normal in birth weight and postnatal growth when compared to those produced by conventional reproductive technologies, such as AI. Subsequent reports have similarly described production of apparently normal progeny from matings of cloned cows and non-cloned bulls [7,9].

A 12-month Feeding Study of Reproduction/Development in Rats Fed Meat/Milk Powder Supplemented Diets Derived from the Progeny of Cloned Cattle Produced by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer

“…These empirical facts can be explained using a mouse model system; it is assumed that there is no risk increase in terms of inducement of abnormalities due to epigenetic errors in the progeny of cloned animals, since any epigenetic errors existing in a clone's genome would be erased during the process of gamete genesis and fertilization [25]. It should be noted that other empirical evidence collected by observation of progeny, such as the calf production rate with artificial insemination, gestation period, birth weight, growth performance, blood parameters and production performance, are also consistent with this assumption [2,5,26] Therefore, this evidence strongly suggests that the progeny of SCNT cattle can be produced for consumption in a manner similar to conventionally bred cattle.…”

Cloned Cows with Short Telomeres Deliver Healthy Offspring with Normal-length Telomeres

“…Their offspring were healthy, and the telomere lengths in their leukocytes were normal [16]. In the second, we showed that artificial insemination of a healthy cloned cow with normal-length telomeres using spermatozoa from another healthy cloned bull yielded healthy offspring with normal telomere lengths [29]. Our series of studies provides compelling evidence that, during gametogenesis in the cloned cattle, telomerase activity in the germ line restores the short telomeres derived from the donor somatic cell to a telomere length typical of the gametes of normal cattle, even if the somatic cells of cloned animals have short telomeres (Fig.…”

Health Status and Productive Performance of Somatic Cell Cloned Cattle and Their Offspring Produced in Japan

“…It should be noted that similarities have been reported for the growth curves of such things as body weight and withers height among nuclear donor and clones originating from the same nuclear donor [6, 13, 26, 31, 33-35, 37, 39]. Similarities in growth curve have also been reported among offspring produced by a pair of cloned cattle and their nuclear donor animals [45].…”

“…Fifty-nine somatic cell cloned cattle (Table 7) and 5 offspring ( Table 8) were employed in this category [6,7,9,10,12,13,17,18,21,23,26,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. The observation period covered the stages from Developmental Node 2 (perinatal period) to Developmental Node 5 (post-puberty maturation and aging).…”