Nucleofection of Ovine Amniotic Fluid-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Abstract

Amniotic fluid has attracted increasing attention in recent years as a possible source of stem cells. Amniotic stem cells have high differentiation ability and low immunogenicity, and are thus an ideal candidate for stem cell-based regenerative therapy. To assess their potential applicability, preclinical studies have been initiated. In this context, the availability of GFP-expressing cells could be extremely useful as a protein marker to visualize transferred stem cells within damaged tissue. In the present study, nucleofection, a recent electroporation-based technique, was used to transfect GFP-expressing plasmids into ovine amniotic fluid-derived stem cells. The study shows that this transfection method can be used to generate stable transgene expression in amniotic stem cells without altering their differentiation potential.