Scientists have managed to induce cells from pigs to transform into pluripotent stem cells. It is the first time in the world that this has been achieved using somatic cells from any animal with hooves.
Dr Xiao, leader of the research, and his colleagues succeeded in generating induced pluripotent stem cells by using transcription factors to reprogram cells taken from a pig's ear and bone marrow. A virus introduced the reprogramming factors into the cells and they changed and developed in the laboratory into colonies of embryonic-like stem cells. Further tests confirmed that they were pluripotent stem cells.
Pig pluripotent stem cells are useful in a number of ways, such as precisely engineering transgenic animals for organ transplantation therapies and creating models for human genetic diseases. To combat the swine flu, for instance, a precise, gene-modified pig could be made to improve the animal's resistance to the disease.
This could be done by first finding a gene that has anti-swine flu activity, or inhibits the proliferation of the swine flu virus and then introducing this gene to the pig via pluripotent stem cells. Alternatively, the swine flu virus receptor can be knocked out from the pig via gene targeting in the pluripotent stem cells so that the virus cannot proliferate and infect the pig.
The next stage of his research is to use the pig iPS cells to generate gene-modified pigs that could provide organs for patients, improve the pig species or be used for disease resistance.
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Original Link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090602192557.htm
Journal reference:
Wu et al. Generation of pig induced pluripotent stem cells with a drug-inducible system. Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, DOI: 10.1093/jmcb/jmp003
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