Effects of Feeder Cells on the Establishment of ES Cells from Mice and Rats. The Difference between Allogenetic and Xenogenetic Feeders.

Abstract

The technology of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells is clearly proving to be a very successful method for producing transgenic mice. Although there has been considerable efforts to establish ES cell lines from other animals, most of all lines obtained, so far, have been derived from mice. Here, we examined effects of allogenetic and xenogenetic feeders on the establishment of ES cells from mice and rats. We first used three types of feeder cells on the establishment of rat ES cells; mouse primary embryonic fibroblsts (M-PEF), rat primary embryonic fibroblasts (R-PEF) and a mouse embryonic fibroblast cell line, SL10. We could gain some rat ES cell lines only on R-PEF. RES-DA1 cell line from DA rat strain, has the same morphology as mouse ES cells, alkaline phosphatase activity and the 4C9 antigen. We, moreover, examined effects of M-PEF and R-PEF feeders on the establishment of mouse ES cells in C57BL/6 mice. The mouse ES cell line could be established only on M-PEF feeders. Both rat and mouse ES cell lines had pluripotenciality. These results suggested that the establishment of ES cell lines is more effective on allogenetic feeder cells than on xenogenetic cells.