 Media Credit: Steve Campbell Look out! There's someone behind ou with identical genetic makeup. [Click to enlarge]
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After four years of research, a team of scientists lead by Dr. Vilceu Bordignon of the Large Animal Research Unit at Macdonald Campus successfully produced Canada's first cloned pigs. Seventeen pigs were born in three litters on Oct. 22, Nov. 6 and Nov. 12. Ten now remain after seven pigs were euthanised after birth to examine for birth abnormalities. Funded by the Canadian Foundation Innovation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and le Fonds Quebécois de la rechèrche sur la nature et les technologies, the research has drawn national attention.
At Macdonald campus, there was a buzz surrounding the event.
"Everybody was very excited in the department. While the pigs were giving birth, we kept each other up to date on what was going on," said Audrey Wachter, an animal science Masters student.
The researchers would like to see this initial research success dove-tail with disease modeling. Cures for diabetes and cardiovascular problems will reap the benefits of this work.
"Amongst other things, the long term goal of the project is the production of transgenic animal models for biomedical research," said Marcelo Albornoz, a member of Bordignon's team and an animal science Master's student.
While the method used to clone mammals has not changed significantly in the past decade since Dolly, there were substantial modifications in the approach made by Bordignon's team. Cloning a pig starts by collecting cells from the specific animal that you wish to replicate. Those cells are grown in a Petri dish, and then frozen and kept alive in vitro by special incubators and heat systems. The second step produces the host female oocytes that will receive the nuclei. These eggs then have their nuclei replaced by those of the collected cells in the first step. The final step involves injecting these hybrid cells into a host female's reproductive system.
From the numerous research organisms available, pigs were chosen as the animals to be cloned for their applicability to biomedical research and their similarity to human beings physiologically and anatomically.
"[Cloning is] a very good model for understanding the physiology or the pathology of human beings," Bordignon said. "If we can generate specific pigs, or a specific phenotype, or a phenotype with specific
characteristics that you can use to understand a disease, then we can advance research; not just to understand how a specific physiological problem happens, but how to fix the problem."
Bordignon plans to keep the pigs in order to monitor growth rates and abnormalities, and also to see if they are fertile.
There is a litter of cloned female piglets scheduled to be born within the next month.
"There are more [cloned pigs] coming; we have pregnant sows with more pregnant animals and soon we are going to produce our disease models starting in 2008." Bordignon said.
2008 Woodie Awards
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