Construction of targeting vector for expressing human GDNF in cattle mammary gland

Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is a type of neurotrophic factor with significant potential in treatment of Parkinson's disease. Combining gene targeting of animal somatic cells with nuclear transfer technique has provided a powerful method to produce transgenic animal mammary gland bioreactor. The aim of this study was to construct a gene-targeting vector for the human gdnf gene knockin at the bovine beta-casein gene locus so that human GDNF protein can be produced in the mammary gland of the gene-targeted bovine. The constructed vector contains the 2.2 kb 5' homologous arm and the 5.7 kb 3' homologous arm. The human gdnf cDNA was located at the downstream of the 5' homologous arm. The neo gene placed between the 5' and 3' homologous arms as positive selection marker gene. The HSV-tk gene and DsRed2 gene were located outside the homologous recombinant area as negative selection marker genes, respectively. The recombinant plasmids were identified by restriction fragment analysis and partial DNA sequencing. The results show that the structure of the final constructed vector accords with the designed plasmid map. In order to analyze the bioactivity of the vector, the plasmid DNA was transfected into human mammary tumor cell line Bcap-37 by lipofectamine. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and Western-blotting analysis showed that the transfected cells produced human GDNF mRNA and protein. The results show that the constructed targeting vector pNRTCNbG has bioactivity to efficiently express GDNF in mammary gland cells. At the same time, it is first time to confirm that human mammary tumor cell line Bcap-37 is valid for bioactivity analysis of mammary gland specific expression vector.