Effect of histone deacetylase inhibitor curcumin on the preimplantation development of cloned bovine embryos

Abstract

Somatic cell nuclear transfer has become an area of focus in general public based on its tremendous potential in various fields such as agriculture or medicine. Although somatic cell nuclear transfer has lead to various accomplishments and offers many advantages over current transgenic techniques available, drawbacks have to be improved to increase future success. First and foremost is the need to increase overall efficiency. As many research has been provided, the success rate for somatic cell nuclear transfer averages between 1–3% in most animals including cattle (Solter D et al., 2000). Scientists had been found that the most essential factor which significantly affects the success rate of somatic cell nuclear transfer was the epigenetic abnormalities. As a results, many experiments had been designed to modify the epigenetic abnormalities. In my thesis, Curcumin which is the new group of Histone Deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) (Liu HL, Chen Y, Cui GH, Zhou JF et al 2005) was used to determine its potential effect on the preimplantation development on cloned bovine embryos. Two experiments were conducted. The first experiment examined the effects of different concentration of curcumin ( 0μM, 0.2μM, 0.5μM, 1uM, 5μM ) on the development of preimplantation of cloned bovine embryos, in which we found that 1uM was the optimal concentration and 5 uM caused the toxicity to the embryos. The the second experiment examined the effects of a two steps treatment of Curcumin ( 0μM, 0.2μM, 0.5μM, 0.1μM) on the development of cloned embryos. We found that the Curcumin treatment groups provide the high blastocyst rate, good morphology and high cell number in comparison with untreated groups. In conclusion, treatment with Curcumin may improve the preimplantation development of cloned bovinev embryos. Keywords: Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), Histone Deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi), Curcumin, preimplantation development on cloned bovine embryos.