Prof. Pasqualino Loi
Prof. Pasqualino Loi started to work on embryos 29 years ago in a small Veterinary Faculty in Sardinia, Italy. He has dedicated a great deal of efforts on embryo multiplication by splitting, blastomere separation and embryonic cells nuclear transfer during his PhD. Then Prof. Pasqualino Loi joined Keith Campbell and Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, to work on a sheep nuclear transfer project aiming at cell cycle coordination between enucleated oocytes and donor embryonic nuclei.
The publications jointly delivered (Campbell, KHS Loi et al., Reviews of Reproduction, 1996; Campbell KHS, Loi P., Biol Reprod. 1994) are milestones in nuclear transfer research and prepared the ground for the production of the first sheep cloned from embryonic (Campbell et al., Nature 1996;380: 64-6) and next adult cell lines (Wilmut et al., Nature 1997, 385: 810-3).
After his work at Roslin, Prof. Pasqualino Loi continued to work on Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) producing the first ever wild animal by cloning (Loi et al. Nature Biotechnology, 2001). SCNT still remains my primary research interest where I have given significant contributions. Prof. Pasqualino Loi have in fact demonstrated for the first time that non-living cells can generate offspring upon SCNT (Loi et al., Biol Reprod. 2002), a breakthrough that has prepared the ground for cloning lyophilized cells (Loi et al., PloS One 2018), till the most recent attempts to clone the mammoth (Yamagata et al., 2019, Sci Rep. 2019; 9:4050).
Prof. Pasqualino Loi ‘s commitment to elucidate the mechanisms for nuclear reprogramming after SCNT continues, and the latest outcomes of my research group represent a valid option to improve nuclear reprogramming by conferring somatic cells the nuclear structure of a spermatid cells, by the heterologous expression of protamine1 (Iuso et al., Cell Reports 2015; Czernik et al., Nature Protocols 2016; Palazzese et al., Plos One, 2018).
