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Embryo production by intracytoplasmic injection of sperm retrieved from neonatal testicular tissue of Agu pigs after cryopreservation and grafting into nude mice
Author(s) -
Kaneko Hiroyuki,
Kikuchi Kazuhiro,
Men Nguyen Thi,
DangNguyen Thanh Quang,
Oyadomari Motoharu,
Touma Shihei,
Suzuki Naoto,
Katagiri Yoshito
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
animal science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.606
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1740-0929
pISSN - 1344-3941
DOI - 10.1111/asj.13479
Subject(s) - intracytoplasmic sperm injection , cryopreservation , embryo , andrology , grafting , biology , medicine , gynecology , chemistry , in vitro fertilisation , microbiology and biotechnology , organic chemistry , polymer
The Agu is the only indigenous pig breed in Japan but its population is very small. In order to estimate the efficacy of testicular xenografting for the conservation of Agu pigs, we investigated whether neonatal testicular fragments would acquire the capacity to produce sperm after they had been cryopreserved and grafted into nude mice. Although on day 180 (day 0 = xenografting), grafts showed a low proportion of seminiferous tubule cross‐sections containing sperm (0.1 ± 0.1%, mean ± SEM for four mice), the proportion reached 36.9 ± 16.7% ( n = 4 mice) by day 240. When single sperm obtained on day 240 was injected into individual porcine oocytes, 28.2% of the oocytes were found to contain one male and one female pronuclei with the second polar body. Moreover, the blastocyst formation rate after injection of the xenogeneic sperm was 28.4%, whereas that in the absence of sperm injection (attributable to parthenogenesis) was 13.3%. These findings suggest that more than half of the blastocysts resulted from fertilization. Thus, testicular xenografting could assist the conservation of Agu pigs by salvaging germ cells present in neonatal testes even after cryopreservation.