Derivation of pluripotent, embryonic cell lines from the pig and sheep.

As previously described for the establishment of stable, pluripotent cell lines from pig blastocysts, an analogous cell line was isolated from a sheep blastocyst. There are common features in the morphologies and growth characteristics of the pig and sheep cells in culture; in particular, pig and sheep cells display large nuclei and relatively sparse cytoplasm, as is observed in mouse embryonic stem cells. Furthermore, the morphology of the sheep cells closely resembles that of cells in primary cultures of inner cell masses isolated immunosurgically from sheep blastocysts. This suggests that the sheep cell line represents a primary ectodermal lineage.