Freeze-dried somatic cells direct embryonic development after nuclear transfer

AbstractThe natural capacity of simple organisms to survive in a dehydrated state has long been exploited by man, withlyophylization the method of choice for the long term storage of bacterial and yeast cells. More recently, attempts havebeen made to apply this procedure to the long term storage of blood cells. However, despite significant progress, practicalapplication in a clinical setting is still some way off. Conversely, to date there are no reports of attempts to lyophilizenucleated somatic cells for possible downstream applications. Here we demonstrate that lyophilised somatic cells stored for3 years at room temperature are able to direct embryonic development following injection into enucleated oocytes. Theseremarkable results demonstrate that alternative systems for the long-term storage of cell lines are now possible, and openunprecedented opportunities in the fields of biomedicine and for conservation strategies.Citation: Loi P, Matsukawa K, Ptak G, Clinton M, Fulka J Jr, et al. (2008) Freeze-Dried Somatic Cells Direct Embryonic Development after Nuclear Transfer. PLoSONE 3(8): e2978. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002978Editor: Suzannah Rutherford, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States of AmericaReceived February 21, 2008; Accepted July 2, 2008; Published August 20, 2008Copyright: 2008 Loi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricteduse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Funding: Research in P.L. laboratory is supported by PRIN 2006, Teramo University Founds (60%) 2006, European Science Foundation, contract no. ERASCT-2003-980409. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.* E-mail: ploi@unite.it¤ Current address: National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science, Osaka, Japan[...]