Body cell cloning pig born in Guangxi

Chinanews, Nanning, Oct 16 – After it
successfully produced the body cell cloning ox in 2005, Guangxi has made another
achievement in its cloning technology. Recently, a body cell cloning pig was
born in Guangxi. This is the first cloning pig produced through the body cell
technology, said Lu Shengsheng, a professor at the Guangxi Zoological Technology
Insitute under Guangxi University, on Monday.

At present, the cloning pig is very healthy. It is also the fifth body
cell cloning pig ever produced in China.

In 2004, Guangxi University and Guangxi Animal Husbandry Research
Institute jointly conducted a research program on the nuclear transplantation in
Bama mini pigs. Lu Shengsheng, who was responsible for the research program,
used the body cell of a Bama mini pig as the donor cell and the oocyte of the
pig as the recipient cytoplasm. Through the enucleation, re-injection and
activation process, scientists obtained a cloned embryo cell. With three years
research, scientists injected the embryo into the womb of a local pig type
called Luchuan pig. The embryo had been stayed in the pig's womb for about 110
days and at nine o'clock on October 13, a cloned pig was born at the Luchuan Pig
Farm at Guangxi Animal Husbandry Research Institute.

Arriving at the scene, this reporter saw that the pig weighed 0.7
kilogram and its body length was about 20 centimeters. The cloned pig was safe
and sound and it walked around its mother from time to time wanting to have some
milk.

The birth of the first cloning pig in Guangxi has laid a solid foundation
for the research of transgenetic pigs, which has a scientific significance in
that it can provide a way for scientists to do organ transplatation through
animal organs. The first cloning pig might also provide some scientific clues
for the protection of the Bama mini pig, a pig that has high economic value in
Guangxi. It shows that the body cell cloning technology is quite mature in
Guangxi now, said researchers at Guangxi Animal Husbandry Research Institute.