Mammalian Cloning and its Application Prospects

Muclear transplantation was originally designed for testing the mechanisms of cell development and differentiation.But since the report of the birth of a sheep called “Dolly”,Cloning instead of nuclear transplantation or nuclear transfer is the most common used concept to describe the mammalian nuclear transplantation in literatures and news,which means the production of genetically identical individuals.This is the first time in mammals,a large number of cloned animals can be derived from the unlimited somatic cells or cell lines,those cells can be cultured and genetically modified in vitro to create medical important transgenes and cloning techniques also can be deployed to rescue endangered species.Cloned animals have been successfully established from donor nuclei of foetal fibroblast cells,foetal muscle cells,cumulus cells,fallopian cells,udder cells and skin epithelium cells.Human embryonic stem(ES) cells technology combining with human therapeutic cloning will be a useful tool to cure some human genetic inherent diseases.In this review,most recent exciting results were presented to address the technique improvements required and the application prospects of mammalian cloning in the near future.