Efficient production of transgenic chickens based on piggyBac

Transgenic techniques in chickens have been developed much more slowly than in mammals due to chickens’ unique reproduction mechanism. Retroviral methods have been the most successful. piggyBac (PB) is a transposon that has a 13 bp perfect terminal invert repeat sequence. PB can be inserted into TTAA sites and can also be precisely excised in mammals. Therefore, we have selected PB as a candidate to establish a new method to produce transgenic chickens. We constructed three donor vectors (ZGl-neo, ZGm-neo and ZGs-neo) expressing a GFP marker-gene and a neomycin resistant gene based on PB. We co-transfected each donor vector with a helper vector (CAG-PBase). We found that ZGl-neo was the most efficient PB vector. This vector could insert into TTAA sites in DF-1 cells. PB vectors were microinjected into sub-germinal cavity of newly laid eggs, and electroporation was then performed with a 20-V pulse for 5 cycles of 50 ms on and 100 ms off. GFP was expressed in different tissues of the embryos, including the gonads. Twenty-two chickens hatched after microinjection with compounds ZGl-neo and CAG-PBase (3:1). When we screened the blood DNA, 73 % (16/22) of the individuals were positive. Thirteen of the chickens grew to adulthood, 11 of which were males. 40 % (4/10) of the individuals were semen positive, and their copy numbers ranged from 0.05 to 0.21 (0.11, 0.21, 0.05, 0.06). No G1 offspring containing the integrated transposon were produced. We conclude that the PB transposon system is a novel useful tool for the efficient production of transgenic chickens.