4 PRODUCTION OF 11β-HYDROXYSTEROID DEHYDROGENASE TYPE 1 (11β-HSD1) OVER-EXPRESSED PIGS FOR THE STUDY OF METABOLIC SYNDROME DISEASE

Abstract

Metabolic syndrome shows a complication at risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. With the high prevalence of obesity globally, the incidence of metabolic syndrome is increased. However, the basic mechanisms of metabolic syndrome are not completely known yet. Therefore, we attempted to develop large-animal model for the study of metabolic syndrome disease. Some studies have shown that constitutive overexpression of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) in mice leads to metabolic syndrome. Therefore, we tried to produce the 11β-HSD1 gene overexpressed pig by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). First, we established 11β-HSD1 overexpressed cells for the preparation of the transgenic (TG) donor cells. Porcine fetal fibroblasts were transfected with cytomegalovirus vector that included the porcine 11β-HSD1 gene. The 11β-HSD1-TG cell was injected into the enucleated ooplasm to produce 11β-HSD1-TG cloned embryos. In total, 833 TG porcine SCNT embryos (TG-SCNT embryos) were made. Of these, 155 TG-SCNT embryos were cultured in procine zygote medium-3 to evaluate the in vitro developmental potential of TG-SCNT embryos. Among these porcine SCNT-TG embryos, 109 embryos (70.3%) were cleaved at 48 h. On Day 7, 31 transgenic porcine SCNT embryos (20.0%) developed to the blastocyst stage. The remaining 678 TG-SCNT embryos were transferred to 6 surrogates (average 113 embryos per surrogate). On 25 days after embryo transfer, 2 surrogates were diagnosed as pregnant (pregnancy rate, 33.3%). On Day 114, we obtained 9 live piglets and 3 stillborn piglets from 2 surrogates. By PCR analysis, we confirmed that 1 live piglet and 2 stillborn piglets were integrated with 11β-HSD1 gene. We succeeded to obtain TG piglets at sixth trials, and for the re-cloning by SCNT, a stable cell line transfected with the 11β-HSD1 gene was established from a TG cloned piglet. This study presents new possibilities for large-animal model development for the study of metabolic syndrome disease. This work was supported, in part, by a grant from the Next-Generation Bio Green 21 Program (No. PJ00956901), Rural Development Administration, and the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2012R1A1A4A01004885, NRF-2013R1A2A2A04008751), Republic of Korea.