China Education News - China Education News Network Qingdao, January 15 (reporter Sun Jun correspondent Qu Tianze) reporter learned from Qingdao Agricultural University today that the team of Dr. Zhao Minghui of the School of Life Sciences of the university successfully obtained the cloned offspring of forest cat somatic cells through research, which is the first university in China to successfully complete the cloning of feline somatic cells.
The first healthy cloned cat in a domestic university
Walking into the laboratory on the 6th floor of the Biology Building of Qingdao Agricultural University, the reporter saw that in the warm incubator, a kitten with black and white flowers was alertly looking at the visitor, looking very healthy. According to researchers, this cloned cat was born on December 24, 2020, weighing 75 grams, because it was the New Year, researchers named it "Ping'an".
Project host Zhao Minghuishi told reporters that at present, the surrogate mother cat and the physiological indicators of "ping an" are performing normally, and all are "safe". The body of this cloned cat is an adult female forest cat that is crossed between a wild forest cat and a Chinese pastoral cat. The researchers isolated and cultured fibroblasts from the cat's skin tissue, used the Eggs of the Chinese Pastoral Cat as nucleus receptors, and produced multiple somatic cloned embryos through nucleus replacement and artificial activation. After the cloned embryos were transferred to the recipient female cat, after 62 days of gestation, a forest cat somatic cell cloned offspring was successfully obtained.
The time of the experiment was shortened by 7 times, and the pregnancy rate was the leading in the world
It is understood that the cloned cat research project was funded by the high-level talent introduction project of Qingdao Agricultural University and the horizontal project of Boya Xiuyan Biotechnology Co., Ltd., which was prepared in 2019 and implemented in July 2020.
"Due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, many difficulties were encountered during the experiment, especially in the first half of the year, the logistics almost stopped, and the cats faced a food shortage. During this time, we went to the seafood wholesale market every morning to wholesale seafood, and came back to make pellet cat food for the cats. Zhao Minghui said, "The second bottleneck is the in vitro maturation of cat eggs. Since our cat eggs come from ovaries cut during sterilization at a pet hospital, the cat eggs collected from these ovary cannot be used directly for cloning and must undergo a period of in vitro maturation. After a lot of experiments, we finally solved this problem by adding the right amount of hormones and growth factors. The birth of the 'Ping An' clone cat also proves that we are successful in the in vitro maturation of cat eggs. ”
Not only that, during the implementation of the project, the team members streamlined and improved the somatic cell cloning method, so that the entire experimental process was shortened from the traditional 36 hours to 5 hours, and the time taken was shortened by 7 times. At the same time, the operation mode of using only one culture medium in the whole process of the experiment avoids the embryonic damage that may be caused by frequent replacement of the culture solution, greatly reduces the operational risk, and improves the stability of the experiment. It is reported that this batch of experiments produced a total of 89 somatic cloned embryos and transferred them to 7 surrogate mother cats, of which 3 surrogate mother cats were pregnant, and the pregnancy rate reached 43%, which was the world's leading level.
"Ping An" cat cloning technology brings a variety of application value
According to reports, the establishment of cat cell cloning technology is not only conducive to promoting the development of animal disease models and drugs, but also plays an important role in the field of biomedicine, the pet industry and the protection of endangered species.
In medical research, cats are important laboratory animals, disease model animals, and companion animals. According to the latest statistics of the OMIA database, 361 genetic diseases have been found in felines, of which 227 are expected to develop into animal models of human homologous diseases, and the pathogenesis of feline epilepsy, hyperlipidemia, cartilage dysplasia and some tumors, AIDS and other diseases is particularly similar to that of humans. What has attracted more attention from researchers is that cats have an ACE2 receptor that is highly similar to the human structure, and this receptor is the main receptor for SARS and the new crown pneumonia virus to infect the human body, which makes it possible for cats to be infected with SARS and new crown pneumonia. Cat cloning and gene editing techniques can be used to mass-produce individuals with specific diseases for use in medical research and drug development.
In terms of pet market development, the data of the 2019 China Pet Industry White Paper shows that the domestic pet cat consumption market size in 2019 was 78 billion yuan. Although the current market price of cat somatic cell cloning is between 150,000 and 250,000 yuan, there are still more and more pet keepers who choose to "regenerate" their pets through somatic cell cloning after their pet dies of illness.
Zhao Minghui told reporters that cat cell cloning also plays an important role in the preservation of endangered species. With the exception of domestic cats, all other felines are endangered or threatened. The loss of fertility of an animal in old age means the functional extinction of the species. Xenocyclav cell cloning using domestic cat eggs is currently the only technology that can replicate endangered animals in large quantities.
Interview Afterword:
20 years of creating and cloning "cows" and then cloning "cats" (insisting on innovation - the "cloning" business is endless)
In the past 20 years, we have witnessed the great pioneering work of "cloning" in a university. In 2001, Dr. Dong Yajuan, College of Animal Science and Technology, Laiyang Agricultural College (now Qingdao Agricultural University), successfully bred China's first pair of healthy and alive somatic cell clone cattle "Kang Kang" and "Shuangshuang", which were world-renowned; at the end of 2020, Dr. Zhao Minghui of the College of Life Sciences of Qingdao Agricultural University successfully bred cloned offspring of forest cat somatic cells. In the past 20 years, we have witnessed the innovative story of Qingdao Agricultural University's continuous research and exploration in animal somatic cell cloning.
Young, shy, and mingling with team members and graduate students was Dr. Zhao Minghui's first impression of reporters. But when he put on the experimental suit and sat in front of the microscope to start the experimental operation, the young post-85 "cat expert" became another look. Zhao Minghui has successfully cloned a number of elite working dogs, and in 2018, he took the lead in creating an in vitro culture method for early canine embryos in the world, laying an important foundation for the study of reproductive physiology of canines. It is also the technology and experience accumulated in the field of canine cloning, which provides an important technical guarantee for the smooth birth of the "Safe" cloned cat.
"The general secretary encouraged the vast number of scientific and technological workers to vigorously carry forward the spirit of scientists and shoulder the heavy responsibility of scientific and technological innovation entrusted by history, which gave me great encouragement." Zhao Minghui said that in the current good environment in which China's society attaches great importance to innovation, young scientific researchers should vigorously carry forward the spirit of scientists and strive for "innovative China".
Cloned cat "Ping An" (right) with surrogate mother cat Sun Jun Qu Tianze Photography
Dr. Zhao Minghui carefully inspects the "peace" of the cloned cat Sun Jun Qu Tianze photography
Author: Sun Jun Qu Tianze
Source: China Education News Network
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