Eggs from the bivalve mollusc Chamelea gallina were transfected in vitro. The p-GeneGrip gene construction that expresses the green fluorescent protein (GFP) was employed. It was necessary to remove the jelly coat which covers the egg surface for a successful transfection, and then 44.2% of gametes appeared transfected after using naked DNA. On the other hand, cationic liposomes (Lipofectamine) and neutral lipids (GenePORTER) were employed as gene vectors. After the employ of Lipofectamine 35.6% of eggs were transfected and 41.4% after using GenePORTER. Fluorescence analysis showed that die foreign gene appeared principally located in the egg cytoplasm, but laser confocal microscopy showed that it was also present in the nucleus. Furthermore, PCR analysis demonstrated that the foreign DNA appeared in the DNA extracted from the treated eggs. This simple method for the transfection of mollusc eggs would be interesting for future biotechnological applications in species of commercial interest.

This work was partially supported by grants BCM2003-00211 from DGICYT (Spain) and 21/2000 from DIPUV (Chile).

Peer reviewed

6 p.-2 fig.