According to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Hainan Province, the National Key Laboratory of Pig Genetic Improvement and Germplasm Innovation at Jiangxi Agricultural University recently successfully obtained the first batch of 16 somatic cloned pigs using frozen white Wuzhishan pig ear tissue samples for 5 years. This achievement marks the beginning of a collective reproduction of the endangered "medical model pig" population, the white Wuzhishan pig. Liu Zuokai, Secretary of the Party Group of Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, introduced that Wuzhishan pig is a unique small pig breed in China, originating from the Wuzhishan area of Hainan Province. In the 1960s, the population of Wuzhishan pigs reached 100000, but by 1989 it was on the brink of extinction. The Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences established the Wuzhishan Pig Resource Conservation Farm in 1998, and the population once recovered to over a thousand heads. However, in 2018, the white five finger mountain pig was on the brink of extinction due to the impact of African swine fever. In order to realize the restoration of white Wuzhishan pig population, the Department of Science and Technology of Hainan Province invited Huang Lusheng, an academician of the CAS Member, to set up an academician workstation in Hainan. Together with experts from Jiangxi Agricultural University, Yunnan Agricultural University, Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other institutions, and relying on the National Key Laboratory for Pig Genetic Improvement and Germplasm Innovation of Jiangxi Agricultural University, the Department of Science and Technology of Hainan Province systematically carried out the research and development of pig germplasm resources protection, pig breeding, laboratory animalization of miniature pigs and xenotransplantation. Wei Hongjiang, Vice President of Yunnan Agricultural University and expert in animal somatic cell cloning who participated in the project, said that the difficulty of cloning white Wuzhishan pigs lies in obtaining high-quality live cells from ear tissue samples frozen for more than 5 years. Due to the limited freezing conditions at that time and the extremely limited number of preserved ear tissue samples, the team had to go through continuous exploration and meticulous technical optimization in order to successfully extract high-quality live cells from these frozen samples that had been frozen for many years. With the help of Academician Huang Lusheng's team, the team obtained high-quality live cells of white Wuzhishan pigs and successfully obtained this batch of somatic cloned pigs through cell dissociation and resurrection technology, combined with nuclear transfer cloning technology. (New Society)