Developmental competence of porcine chimeric embryos produced by aggregation

The purpose of our study was to compare the developmental competence and blastomere allocation of porcine chimeric embryos formed by micro-well aggregation. Chimeras were created by aggregating either two blastomeres originating from 2-cell embryos or two whole embryos, where embryos were produced either by parthenogenetic activation (PA) or handmade cloning (HMC).Results showed that the developmental competence of chimeric embryos, evaluated based on their blastocyst rate and total cell number per blastocyst, was increased when two whole 2-cell stage embryos (PA or HMC) were aggregated. In comparison, when two blastomeres were aggregated,the developmental competence of the chimeric embryos decreased if the blastomeres were either from PA or from HMC embryos, but not if they were from different sources, i.e. one PA and one HMC blastomere. To evaluate the cell contribution in embryo formation, aggregation was made with HMC embryos cloned using EGFP transgenic cells; the cell contribution in the formation of the inner cell mass or trophectoderm was random in chimeric blastocysts. Finally, two blastomeres from 2-cell stage embryos were fused to construct tetraploid embryos, and when diploid and tetraploid embryos were used for aggregation, the cells of the ICM and its close vicinity were mostly formed by blastomeres from the diploid embryo.