BALLISTIC TRANSFECTION OF AVIAN PRIMORDIAL GERM-CELL IN OVO

In the fowl the primordial germ cells accumulate in the germinal cresc ent to the anterior of the two-day embryo. A simple ballistic device h as been used to fire tungsten particles (mean diameter 1.5 mu m) into this region. By coating these projectiles with vector DNA it is possib le to transfect these cells. Hatchlings produced by this technique wer e raised to sexual maturity and shown to contain the foreign DNA in th eir sperm. G(1) offspring containing this DNA were also produced in ro ughly 20% of these cockerels. In the majority of cases the vector DNA disappeared from the G(1) generation as they matured suggesting that i n these cases it had been transmitted episomally.