Category | Method | Remarks | Germ line transmission potential |
---|---|---|---|
Ex vivo approaches | Pronuclear injection | The most commonly used method followed by thousands of labs for over 3 decades | High |
Viral Vectors | A few labs used. Limited success. | High when lentiviral vectrs are used | |
Receptor-mediated uptake | Only one report [28]. | Not proven | |
In vitro electroporation | Novel approach: also proven using CRISPR system. | High | |
Liposomal transfection | Very few labs used. Limited success. | Not proven | |
Blastocyst microinjection | Only one report [32]: may be suitable for expression analysis in embryonic tissues. | Not proven | |
Sperm-mediated gene transfer (SMGT) | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. | Low | |
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection-mediated gene transfer (ICSI-MGT) | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. | Low | |
In vivo delivery to pre-implantation embryos, fetuses and ovarian tissues | GONAD | Only one report [50]. This method completely eliminates the need for isolation, microinjection and transfer of embryos to recipient mice. Only one recent so far, yet to be tested in other labs. | Not proven yet, but highly likely |
Trans-placental gene delivery to fetuses | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. | Very low | |
Delivery to fetal tissues in utero | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. | Very low | |
In vivo delivery to ovarian tissues | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. | Low | |
In vivo delivery to male gonadal tissues | Testis-mediated gene transfer (TMGT) | Several labs have attempted. Limited success. | Possible, may need to screen many offspring from the treated males |
Seminiferous tubule-mediated gene delivery | A few labs have attempted. Limited success. | ||
Gene delivery via vas deferens | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. | ||
Nucleic acids delivery to the cauda epididymis | Very few labs have attempted. Limited success. |