Assessment of Fetal Cell Chimerism in Transgenic Pig Lines Generated by Sleeping Beauty Transposition

Human cells migrate between mother and fetus during pregnancy and persist in the respective host for long-term after birth. Fetal microchimerism occurs also in twins sharing a common placenta or chorion. Whether microchimerism occurs in multiparous mammals such as the domestic pig, where fetuses have separate placentas and chorions, is not well understood. Here, we assessed cell chimerism in litters of wild-type sows inseminated with semen of transposon transgenic boars. Segregation of three independent monomeric transposons ensured an excess of transgenic over non-transgenic offspring in every litter. Transgenic siblings (n = 35) showed robust ubiquitous expression of the reporter transposon encoding a fluorescent protein, and provided an unique resource to assess a potential cell trafficking to non-transgenic littermates (n = 7) or mothers (n = 4). Sensitive flow cytometry, fluorescence microscopy, and real-time PCR provided no evidence for microchimerism in porcine littermates, or piglets and their mothers in both blood and solid organs. These data indicate that the epitheliochorial structure of the porcine placenta effectively prevents cellular exchange during gestation.