Transgenic swine for biomedicine and agriculture

Initial technologies for creating transgenic swine only permitted random integration of the construct. However, by combining the technology for homologous recombination in fetal somatic cells with that of nuclear transfer (NT), it is now possible to create specific modifications to the swine genome. The first such example is that of knocking out a gene that is responsible for hyperacute rejection (HAR) when organs from swine are transferred to primates. Because swine are widely used as models of human diseases, there are opportunities for genetic modification to alter these models or to create additional models of human disease. Unfortunately, some of the offspring resulting from NT have abnormal phenotypes. However, it appears that these abnormal phenotypes are a result of epigenetic modifications and, thus, are not transmitted to the offspring of the clones. Although the technique of producing animals with specific genetic modifications by NT has been achieved, improvements to the NT technique as well as improvements in the culture conditions for somatic cells and the techniques for genetic modification are still needed. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc.