Assessment of fetal cell chimerism in transgenic pig lines generated by Sleeping beauty transposition

PLoS One. 2014 May 8;9(5):e96673. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096673. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Human cells migrate between mother and fetus during pregnancy and persist in the respective host for long-term after birth. Fetal microchimerism occurs also in twins sharing a common placenta or chorion. Whether microchimerism occurs in multiparous mammals such as the domestic pig, where fetuses have separate placentas and chorions, is not well understood. Here, we assessed cell chimerism in litters of wild-type sows inseminated with semen of transposon transgenic boars. Segregation of three independent monomeric transposons ensured an excess of transgenic over non-transgenic offspring in every litter. Transgenic siblings (n = 35) showed robust ubiquitous expression of the reporter transposon encoding a fluorescent protein, and provided an unique resource to assess a potential cell trafficking to non-transgenic littermates (n = 7) or mothers (n = 4). Sensitive flow cytometry, fluorescence microscopy, and real-time PCR provided no evidence for microchimerism in porcine littermates, or piglets and their mothers in both blood and solid organs. These data indicate that the epitheliochorial structure of the porcine placenta effectively prevents cellular exchange during gestation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Animals, Genetically Modified / embryology*
  • Animals, Genetically Modified / genetics*
  • Cell Movement*
  • Chimera*
  • DNA Transposable Elements / genetics*
  • Female
  • Fetus / cytology*
  • Fetus / metabolism
  • Genes, Reporter / genetics
  • Male
  • Mothers
  • Placenta / physiology
  • Pregnancy
  • Semen / metabolism
  • Swine

Substances

  • DNA Transposable Elements

Grants and funding

Financial support was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via KU-1586/2-1 and SPP1313 is acknowledged. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.