July 27, 2007

China clones pig for organ transplant and pig breeding research

Chinese scientists in Shanghai has cloned a pig to be used for research on organ transplants and pig breeding.

The black and white piglet, weighing 2kg, was the first cloned pig to be born in the city.

Zhang Defu, a professor of the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences in charge of the project, said the cloned pig has passed the critical first 48 hours when it was most likely to die.

The cell used to create the pig came from the embryo of a Bama mini pig (a species from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region).

Chen Xuejin, an associate professor from Xinhua Hospital who is working on the cloning project, said Bama mini pigs were chosen as the weight of a grown Bama mini pig is close to that of an adult human and the function and size of its organs are also similar to human organs.

The pig will help scientists study organ transplants and the cloning technology will be used to improve pig breeding.

The research group tried planting cloned embryos with 10 pigs, with between 170 and 200 embryos transplanted every time. After three months, however, only one cloned pig was born successfully.

Zhang said cloning a pig is more difficult to than cloning a cow or a goat. As it is hard to detect the cell nucleus of a pig even under a microscope, the success rate of pig cloning is quite low.

Researchers said they would monitor the growth rate of the cloned pig and its reproductive capabilities while working to improve the success rate of cloning.