Transcriptional failures arrest development after human nuclear transfer

Reprogramming occurs after nuclear transfer into zygotes whose genomes have been removed in mitosis, but not after nuclear transfer into zygotes enucleated in interphase. Our results suggest that there is a previously unappreciated barrier to successful human nuclear transfer, and that future studies should focus on the requirements for somatic genome activation. 1-3 embryos were used for analysis. RNA amplification was done using two or three rounds of T7-mediated RNA amplification using the Illumina Total Prep RNA Amplification kit. Somatic cells 1-000 and 1-011 required only one round of RNA amplification because starting amounts of RNA were 100-500ng, while embryonic samples were amplified from single cells or embryos.