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Xinhua News Agency, Haikou, August 3 (Reporter Luo Jiang, Wang Cunfu) The reporter learned from the Hainan Provincial Department of Science and Technology on the 3rd that the National Key Laboratory of Swine Genetic Improvement and Germplasm Innovation of Jiangxi Agricultural University used frozen white Wuzhishan pig ear tissue samples, cell dissociation and resurrection technology, combined with nuclear transplantation cloning technology, to obtain the first batch of 16 somatic cell cloned pigs. This marks the beginning of the herd reproduction of the white Wuzhishan pigs that have suffered devastating effects of African swine fever.

Wuzhishan pig is a small pig breed unique to my country. It originated in Wuzhishan area of ​​Hainan Province. There are three different coat color lines: dark cloud covered snow, pure black and white. In the 1960s, there were 100,000 Wuzhishan pigs in stock, which gradually decreased and became endangered in 1989. In 1998, Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences established Wuzhishan pig resource conservation farm, and the population recovered to 1,179 in 2005. However, affected by African swine fever, the white Wuzhishan pig is once again on the verge of extinction.

In order to achieve the herd recovery of the white Wuzhishan pigs, the Hainan Provincial Department of Science and Technology invited Huang Lusheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to set up an academician workstation in Hainan. In collaboration with Jiangxi Agricultural University, Yunnan Agricultural University, Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other institutions, and relying on the National Key Laboratory of Swine Genetic Improvement and Germplasm Innovation of Jiangxi Agricultural University, we systematically carried out pig germplasm resource protection, pig breeding, small pig experimental animalization and xenotransplantation research and development work.

Wei Hongjiang, an animal somatic cell cloning expert who participated in the project and vice president of Yunnan Agricultural University, said that the difficulty of the work lies in obtaining high-quality living cells from ear tissue samples that have been frozen for more than five years. Due to the limited freezing conditions of the samples at the time and the limited number of preserved samples, it was necessary to continuously explore and optimize the solution to obtain high-quality living cells. With the help of Academician Huang Lusheng's team, the team obtained high-quality living cells of the white Wuzhishan pig and finally successfully obtained this batch of somatic cell cloned pigs.

Zhao Yaofeng, director of the National Key Laboratory of Animal and Poultry Breeding at China Agricultural University, said that pigs are highly similar to humans in terms of anatomical size and structure, physiology, immunology and genome, and are biomedical models for studying human development, congenital diseases and pathogen response mechanisms. They have great potential in xenogeneic organ donors and vaccine and drug design. Wuzhishan pigs, especially the white Wuzhishan pigs, are potential medical models and organ transplant donors, and have extremely important germplasm resource value. (End)