Generation of chimeric minipigs by aggregating 4- to 8-cell-stage blastomeres from somatic cell nuclear transfer with the tracing of enhanced green fluorescent protein.

To our knowledge, this is the first report of porcine chimeras generated by aggregating 4- to 8-cell-stage blastomeres from SCNT. We detected chimerism only in the skin, heart, and kidneys. Collectively, these results indicate that aggregation using 4- to 8-cell-stage SCNT embryos offers a practical approach for producing chimeric minipigs. Furthermore, it also provides a potential platform for generating interspecific chimeras between pigs and non-human primates for xenotransplantation.