Apoptosis of transgenic cloned and recloned bovine blastocysts

Apoptosis plays an important role in preimplantation embryonic development. Investigating mechanisms of apoptosis can provide useful information for obtaining high-quality embryos and help to improve cloning efficiency. Here, we investigated the incidence of blastomere apoptosis in transgenic blastocysts generated by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) and recloning using a terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated d-UTP nick end-labeling (TUNEL) assay. Transgenic recloned embryos were the second generation SCNT embryos derived from the somatic cells of a transgenic SCNT calf. The blastocyst rate of transgenic SCNT embryos was lower than that of nontransgenic SCNT embryos. The incidence of apoptosis in transgenic SCNT embryos was higher than that of nontransgenic SCNT embryos. The blastocyst rate and the incidence of apoptosis in transgenic recloned embryos were similar to nontransgenic SCNT embryos. The process of donor cell transfection and drug selection may decrease the developmental capacity of transgenic SCNT embryos. Serial cloning did not influence the developmental capacity of transgenic recloned embryos.