The Fate of Mitochondria in Ibex-hirus Reconstructed Early Embryos

Yan JIANG, Shu-Zhen
LIU, Yan-Ling ZHANG, Man-Xi JIANG, Qing-Yuan SUN, and Da-Yuan CHEN*
( State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Biology, Institute of Zoology, the Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China )

Abstract Inter-species nuclear
transfer could be used to preserve North Goat (Capra ibex), an endangered
species. We established the culture conditions for ibex-hirus reconstructed
embryos and optimized the method for DNA extractions of a single cell and early
cloned embryo. By using mitochondria-specific probes
of ibex and hirus respectively we found that mitochondria of donor
cells can co-exist with recipients in 1-cell and 2-cell stages of the reconstructed
embryos but not in the following developmental stages.

Key words Capra ibex;
cloned embryos; nuclear transfer; mitochondria; PCR

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Received: December 24, 2003 Accepted:
March 25, 2004
This work was supported by a grant from the Special Funds for Major Basic Research
Project of China (G 20000161)
*Corresponding author: Tel, 86-10-62560528; Fax, 86-10-62565689; Email,[email protected]