Gene Engineering Laboratory

Research scope:

Our research focuses on the molecular mechanism of the mammal early development, using the preimplantation normal or nuclear transfer embryos from rabbits or mice as experimental materials. Meanwhile, the studies on aging at molecular level and expression of foreign genes in transgenic animals are also undertaken in our laboratory.

The work accomplished:

One of the research projects is “Studies on dispelling differentiation, reprogramming and developmental totipotency of transplanted nucleus in the cytoplasm of oocytes”, which was supported by the Major State Basic Research Development Program. It is well known that when the first cloned sheep Dolly from somatic cell was born in 1997, which demonstrated that the differentiated cell can be reversed, more biologists in the world started the studies of mammal cloning. At same time, a lot of important scientific questions have been raised in this research field. Most of the questions, such as how to dispel the differentiation, when to start the reprogramming and so on, are still unresolved. It is very clear that before the problems are solved, the somatic cell cloning can not be considered to be based on secure scientific principle. If we want to raise the effectiveness of somatic cell cloning and to reduce the death rate of the transferred nucleus embryos, the basic research should be carried out and the molecular mechanism of animal cloning must be understood. More recently, some interesting data were obtained with DDRT-PCR method and some differentially expressed fragments were identified which just appeared in the early stage of developmental embryos. The further studies on the function of the differential fragments are carrying on. Another project is to prepare transgenic animals with different genes. The transgenic animals, such as pig, mice and sheep, were produced in our laboratory. In the last few years, more studies have been performed on how to raise foreign gene expression level and how to improve the technique of foreign gene transfer, which are of potential useful in practical purposes. To study of molecular mechanism of aging and anti-aging is also of interest in our laboratory.  So far, several genes related with aging were cloned from “SAM” mice and functions of these genes will be further studied.

Qingxuan Chen
Address: Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology. Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zhong Guan Cun Nan Yi Tiao No.3. Beijing 100080, China
Tel:  86-10-82614427 (O); 86-10-62553160 (L); Fax: 86-10-62551951
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