- 著者
- Norikazu MIYASHITA Yasuaki KUBO Miharu YONAI Kanako KANEYAMA Norio SAITO Ken SAWAI Akira MINAMIHASHI Toshiyuki SUZUKI Toshiyuki KOJIMA Takashi NAGAI
- 出版者
- THE SOCIETY FOR REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT
- 雑誌
- Journal of Reproduction and Development (ISSN:09168818)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- pp.1108020393-1108020393, (Released:2011-08-05)
- 被引用文献数
- 6 13
Dolly, the first mammal cloned from a somatic cell, had shorter telomeres than age-matched controls and died at an early age because of disease. To investigate longevity and lifetime performance in cloned animals, we produced cloned cows with short telomeres using oviductal epithelial cells as donor cells. At 5 years of age, despite the presence of short telomeres, all cloned cows delivered multiple healthy offspring following artificial insemination with conventionally processed spermatozoa from noncloned bulls, and their milk production was comparable to that of donor cows. Moreover, this study revealed that the offspring had normal-length telomeres in their leukocytes and major organs. Thus, cloned animals have normal functional germ lines, and therefore germ line function can completely restore telomere lengths in clone gametes by telomerase activity, resulting in healthy offspring with normal-length telomeres.