DNA methylation in the early porcine embryo

Reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, parthenogenetic activation, and somatic cell nuclear transfer are powerful procedures in the production of animals for agriculture, basic research, and biomedical research. Research using these techniques has produced important insights into the basic mechanisms of gametogenesis, embryogenesis, and fetal development. Unfortunately, the production of live animals by using these in vitro technologies is very inefficient. One component contributing to this inefficiency is in vitro oocyte maturation and in vitro culture of early embryos and donor cells for somatic cell nuclear transfer has been shown to have detrimental effects on the epigenetic factor of cytosine methylation in cytosine-guanine dinucleotides. The purpose of this research is to study the dynamics of DNA methylation in porcine gametes, clonal cell lines, adult somatic cells, and early embryos produced by using in vivo, in vitro, parthenogenetic, and somatic cell nuclear transfer procedures. Differential Methylation Hybridization microarrays were used to study DNA methylation of the aforementioned groups. Bisulfite sequencing was used to confirm the microarray