Marcelo Bertolini Postdoctoral Researcher Principal Investigator: Dr. Gary B. Anderson   Phone: (530)754-9338 FAX: (530)752-0175 E-mail: mbertolini@ucdavis.edu

Education

D.V.M., Veterinary Medicine, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1990.
M.S., Animal Reproduction, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1994.
Ph.D., Physiology, University of California, Davis, CA, 2002.

Projects:

Developmental abnormalities associated with bovine embryo manipulations

The long-term goal of our ongoing research projects involving embryo manipulations in cattle is to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying the appearance of the Large Calf Syndrome after in vitro embryo production by in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo culture (IVC) or nuclear transfer (NT) procedures. The perturbations occurring during the first days after fertilization may profoundly interfere with the post-implantation embryonic, fetal and placental growths. However, its physiological or molecular bases still remain unknown. Potential mechanisms that could lead to the appearance of this syndrome are under scrutiny, with the examination of physiological aspects that have been shown to influence embryonic development, fetal and placental growth. Studies on epigenetic regulation of gene expression may provide some clues in the way in which the manipulation of the embryo or its environment during early development might influence the phenotype of the offspring.

Effects of induced epigenetic modifications on survival and differentiation of bovine somatic cells and their use for the production of cloned embryos

The use of somatic cells coupled to NT procedures has great potential for the production of stem cell populations in humans and animals for use in cell therapy and as models for biomedical research, developmental and reproductive biology, and mammalian embryology. However, defective epigenetic reprogramming has been linked to the inefficiency of the cloning procedure and to increased rates of anomalies observed after somatic cell NT in cattle, sheep, and mice. Due to its role in the regulation of gene expression and embryonic development, and association with aging and cancer, DNA methylation is the epigenetic modification considered essential for the regulation of nuclear reprogramming, and lines of evidence show that the introduction of a highly methylated somatic nucleus into an oocyte does not appear to confer accurate epigenetic modifications of the genome. By understanding the biology of reprogramming, induced epigenetic modifications may provide means to manipulate differentiated cells, returning them to a totipotent state for therapy, even circumventing the cloning process. Procedures to modify or improve the process of nuclear reprogramming eventually may lead to increased understanding of epigenetic modifications associated with early embryo development, aging, cancer, epigenetic-associated syndromes and embryo manipulations.