ABSTRACT

Nuclear Transfer.................................................................................78 6.4.2 Importance of Donor Cells ................................................................80

6.4.2.1 Cell Cycle Stage .................................................................80 6.4.2.2 Donor Cell Type and Further Development of

Nuclear-Transferred Embryos ............................................81 6.5 In Vitro Development of Cloned Rabbit Embryos ........................................82 6.6 In Vivo Development of Rabbit Embryos Reconstructed from

Somatic Cells .................................................................................................83 6.7 Rabbit Chimeric Offspring Produced from SCNT Embryos:

An Alternative Way to Reprogram Rabbit Fibroblasts Up to Term? ...........87 6.7.1 Chimera Production (see Schema 6.2) ..............................................88

6.8 Conclusion......................................................................................................90 References................................................................................................................91

Among the species used today in biomedical research or for pharmacology and toxicology studies, the rabbit offers several main advantages over the widely used rodent models. First, its larger size allows several physiological manipulations to be repeatedly performed more easily than in small-sized mice [1]. Second, most if not all toxicology objectives related to reproductive physiology can include longitudinal analysis because semen and embryos can be obtained from live animals (see the review in Foote and Carney [2]), which is not feasible in rodents. Third, a large historical control database exists in the rabbit to distinguish treatment-induced fetal anomalies from naturally occurring ones [3]. Fourth, the biology and physiology of the rabbit have been characterized in detail since this species was first used as a pioneer model at the emergence of mammalian experimental embryology at the turn of the 20th century [4]. Finally, phylogenetic and genetic comparisons of different mammalian genomes have clearly shown that rabbit is closer to human than mouse is [5].