An experiment on cloning a cow of the Yakut breed began in Yakutia

“Work has begun with primary cell cultures and eggs of modern animals using the example of cattle at the branch of the UAE Center for Biotechnology Research, which opened in March this year on the basis of Northeastern Federal University. The researchers plan to use cell biology methods to obtain a clone of the native breed of the Yakut cow,” the university said.

The project is being carried out jointly with the Yakut Research Institute of Agriculture, the Sakhaagroplem enterprise and the Yakutsk cattle gene pool state enterprise. Postgraduate students of the NEFU Institute of Natural Sciences, who are doing an internship in the city of Abu Dhabi, are working on the project.

“On the way to obtaining high-quality scientific material for subsequent cloning, a lot of help is required from the direct holders of aboriginal livestock. This is the selection of suitable donors, their genetic certification, tissue biopsy, obtaining oocytes, and more, ”Lena Grigorieva, a leading researcher at the international center for collective use “Molecular Paleontology” of the Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, NEFU, was quoted at the university.

As specified at the university, at present, with the support of partners, work has begun on obtaining primary cell cultures of the Yakut cattle breed. In addition, cell lines of the Simmental cow breed have been successfully obtained and cultivated. it is planned to conduct experiments on IVF, ICSI (fertilization with a single spermatozoon) and move on to the most difficult one - cloning (transfer of the nucleus of a donor cell into an egg with deleted genetic information).

“All the necessary laboratory infrastructure was purchased with the help of foreign colleagues with the assistance of the Abu Dhabi Development Fund. The material obtained in the course of joint research - cells, embryos, DNA - will become an invaluable contribution to the existing bank of biomaterial of aboriginal cattle in Yakutia, ”Grigorieva noted.