NUCLEAR TRANSPLANTATION IN MAMMALIAN EGGS AND EMBRYOS

This chapter discusses the progress of nuclear transplantation studies in mammals, the important biological factors influencing the development of eggs and embryos reconstituted by nuclear transplantation, and the prospects for future studies in this field. The transplantation of a nucleus to an appropriate cytoplast and the subsequent analysis of its embryonic development provide the most vigorous and direct tests of genomic totipotency of a cell nucleus. The most advanced studies are those carried out in amphibia. Totipotency, the capacity to direct the formation of fertile frogs, has been demonstrated for the nuclei of many kinds of embryonic cells; pluripotency, as judged by the development of heart-beating larvae, has been proved for all the cell nuclei tested to date. © 1995, Academic Press Inc.