Mouse oocytes injected with testicular spermatozoa or round spermatids can develop into normal offspring

Development ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 121 (8) ◽  
pp. 2397-2405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Kimura ◽  
R. Yanagimachi

Genomic imprinting occurs in both male and female gametes during gametogenesis, but the exact time when imprinting begins and ends is unknown. In the present study we injected nuclei of testicular spermatozoa and round spermatids into mature mouse oocytes to see whether these nuclei are able to participate in syngamy and normal embryonic development. If the injected oocytes develop into normal fertile offspring, imprinting in the male germ cells used must have been completed by the time of injection. Ninety-two percent of mouse oocytes injected with testicular spermatozoa survived and 94% of these were fertilized normally (extrusion of the second polar body and formation of male and female pronuclei). When 44 two-cell embryos so created were transferred to 5 foster mothers, 24 (54.5%) developed into normal offspring. Unlike testicular spermatozoa, round spermatids could not activate the oocytes, and therefore the oocytes had to be activated artificially either before or after spermatid injection. The highest rate (77%) of normal fertilization was obtained when the oocytes were first activated by electric current, then injected individually with a single spermatid nucleus. When 131 two-cell embryos were transferred to 15 foster mothers, 37 (28.2%) reached full term. All but two grew into healthy adults. Thus, it would appear that gametic imprinting in mouse spermatogenic cells is completed before spermiogenesis begins. Under the experimental conditions employed, spermatid nuclei were less efficient than testicular sperm nuclei in producing normal offspring, but perhaps this was due to technical rather than inherent problems.

1992 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.Z. Kubiak ◽  
M. Weber ◽  
G. Geraud ◽  
B. Maro

When metaphase II-arrested mouse oocytes (M II) are activated very soon after ovulation, they respond abortively by second polar body extrusion followed by another metaphase arrest (metaphase III, M III; Kubiak, 1989). The M II/M III transition resembles the natural transition between the first and second meiotic metaphases (M I/M II). We observed that a similar sequence of events takes place during these two transitions: after anaphase, a polar body is extruded, the microtubules of the midbody disappear rapidly and a new metaphase spindle forms. The MPM-2 monoclonal antibody (which reacts with phosphorylated proteins associated with the centrosome during M-phase) stains discrete foci of peri-centriolar material only in metaphase arrested oocytes; during both transitional periods, a diffuse staining is observed, suggesting that these centrosomal proteins are dephosphorylated, as in a normal interphase. However, the chromosomes always remain condensed and an interphase network of microtubules is never observed during the transitional periods. Incorporation of 32P into proteins increases specifically during the transitional periods. Pulse-chase experiments, after labeling of the oocytes in M phase with 32P, showed that a 62 kDa phosphoprotein band disappears at the time of polar body extrusion. Histone H1 kinase activity (which reflects the activity of the maturation promoting factor) drops during both transitional periods to the level characteristic of interphase and then increases when the new spindle forms. Both the M I/M II and M II/M III transitions require protein synthesis as demonstrated by the effect of puromycin. These results suggest that the two M-phase/M-phase transitions are probably driven by the same molecular mechanism.


Zygote ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Bartholomeusz

The polar bodies are derived from meiotic divisions during oogenesis and are contained together with the oocyte within the zona pellucida. Fertilisation triggers the second meiotic division, at which time the second polar body (PB2) is formed (Hogan et al., 1986; Schatten et al., 1988; Johnson & Everitt, 1995) There is no clear evidence on the fate of the polar bodies in any mammal including the mouse, which is the commonly used research model. However, the polar bodies are generally considered as waste material, and therefore not essential to embryo development. In recent years the polar bodies have gained prominence as they have been used in humans for pre-implantation genetic diagnostic purposes (PGD), of single gene disorders, such as determining whether an embryo may have inherited the cystic fibrosis allele from its mother (Munne et al., 1995; Strom et al., 1998; Rechitsky et al., 2000). PB2 also has a potential use in cloning, for the harvesting of stem cells. Wakayama et al. (1997) have shown that PB2 has the same genetic potential as the female pronuclei and can be used for the production of normal offspring in mice. The successful use of PB2 for these purposes is dependent on its age, for its longevity, rate and nature of degeneration has yet to be determined. While there is little doubt that the first polar body (PB1) experiences a necrotic fate, the same cannot be said for PB2, which may experience an apoptotic fate. Furthermore if PB2 experiences an apoptotic fate rather than a necrotic one, it would not only be the earliest evidence of apoptosis in a mammal but also provide an excellent research model for the study of apoptosis.


Development ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 122 (6) ◽  
pp. 1957-1964 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kalab ◽  
J.Z. Kubiak ◽  
M.H. Verlhac ◽  
W.H. Colledge ◽  
B. Maro

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) become activated during the meiotic maturation of oocytes from many species; however, their molecular targets remain unknown. This led us to characterize the activation of the ribosomal subunit S6 kinase of Mr 82 X 10(3) - 92 X 10(3) (p90rsk; a major substrate of MAPK in somatic cells) in maturing mouse oocytes and during the first cell cycle of the mouse embryo. We assessed the phosphorylation state of p90rsk by examining the electrophoretic mobility shifts on immunoblots and measured the kinase activity of immunoprecipitated p90rsk on a S6-derived peptide. Germinal vesicle stage (GV) oocytes contained a doublet of Mr 82 × 10(3) and 84 × 10(3) with a low S6 peptide kinase activity (12% of the maximum level found in metaphase II oocytes). A band of Mr 86 × 10(3) was first observed 30 minutes after GV breakdown (GVBD) and became prominent within 2 to 3 hours. MAPK was not phosphorylated 1 hour after GVBD, when the p90rsk-specific S6 kinase activity reached 37 % of the M II level. 2 hours after GVBD, MAPK became phosphorylated and p90rsk kinase activity reached 86% of the maximum level. The p90rsk band of Mr 88 × 10(3), present in mature M II oocytes when S6 peptide kinase activity is maximum, appeared when MAPK phosphorylation was nearly complete (2.5 hours after GVBD). In activated eggs, the dephosphorylation of p90rsk to Mr 86 X 10(3) starts about 1 hour after the onset of pronuclei formation and continues very slowly until the beginning of mitosis, when the doublet of Mr 82 X 10(3) and 84 X 10(3) reappears. A role for a M-phase activated kinase (like p34cdc2) in p90rsk activation was suggested by the reappearance of the Mr 86 X 10(3) band during first mitosis and in 1-cell embryos arrested in M phase by nocodazole. The requirement of MAPK for the full activation of p90rsk during meiosis was demonstrated by the absence of the fully active Mr 88 X 10(3) band in maturing c-mos −/− oocytes, where MAPK is not activated. The inhibition of kinase activity in activated eggs by 6-DMAP after second polar body extrusion provided evidence that both MAPK- and p90rsk-specific phosphatases are activated at approximately the same time prior to pronuclei formation.


Zygote ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisayo Nakasaka ◽  
Shuji Yamano ◽  
Kenji Hinokio ◽  
Koji Nakagawa ◽  
Midori Yoshizawa ◽  
...  

Freshly ovulated mouse oocytes exposed to 5 mM calcium ionophore A23187 for 5 min and controls (not exposed) were cultured in TYH medium with 10 μg/ml puromycin (the puromycin group) or 2 mM 6-dimethylaminopurine (DMAP; the DMAP group) for 4 h. Among the controls, few oocytes were activated even if they were treated with DMAP or puromycin. In the oocytes exposed to A23187, in contrast, the activation rate, i.e. the rate of oocytes showing at least one pronucleus (PN) after the treatment, was 46.2% (48/104) in the DMAP group and 90.0% (118/131) in the puromycin group. Activation rate in the puromycin group was significantly higher than in the DMAP and control groups (p < 0.0001, respectively). Furthermore, 82.4% (108/131) of the activated oocytes in the puromycin group showed one PN with extrusion of the second polar body (PB). In the puromycin group, the DNA content of the PN of parthenogenones with 1PN2PB was half that of a set of metaphase II chromosomes. Chromosomal analysis was possible in 14 parthenogenones with 1PN2PB in the puromycin group. The parthenogenones possessed a normal set (n = 20) of haploid chromosomes. The combination of A23187 and puromycin proved to be an effective method of producing haploid parthenogenones.


Zygote ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Dozortsev ◽  
T. Wakaiama ◽  
A. Ermilov ◽  
R. Yanagimachi

We applied intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to the rat comparing three different sperm injection techniques: conventional setup with a sharp needle bearing a spike (method 1), combination of partial zona dissection (PZD) needle and blunt pipette (method 2) and piezo-injection using a blunt pipette (method 3). We also investigated the timing of sperm pronuclear formation after injection. Survival rates after injection were 8%, 24% and 71% for the methods 1, 2 and 3, respectively. All surviving oocytes formed pronuclei by about 6 h after injection. Although the survival and activation rates following sperm injection using piezo-injection were high, the incidence of normal fertilisation, as evidenced by second polar body extrusion and formation of two pronuclei, was only 10%. The vast majority of the zygotes were multinucleated, although most of them subsequently underwent cleavage. Fixation and staining of injected oocytes at different times after injection revealed that replacement of sperm nuclear protamines by histones takes place by 15 min after injection, sperm head swelling occurs within 0.5–1 h after injection and pronuclei become fully developed by 7 h after injection. Although the rate of normal fertilisation in the rat following ICSI was low under the present experimental conditions, the results indicated that direct ICSI using a piezo-driven pipette would be a potentially valuable method of producing rat offspring.


Zygote ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 795-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Pereira dos Santos ◽  
George Shigueki Yasui ◽  
Pedro Luiz Porfírio Xavier ◽  
Nadya Soares de Macedo Adamov ◽  
Nivaldo Ferreira do Nascimento ◽  
...  

SummaryThe aim of this study was to describe the morphology of gametes, post-fertilization events and subsequent temperature effects on the early developmental stages of the neotropical species Astyanax altiparanae. The sperm of this species presents a typical morphology of teleost sperm with a spherical head (diameter = 1.88 µm), midpiece (diameter = 0.75 µm) and a single flagellum (length = 18.67 µm). The extrusion of the second polar body and fusion of male and female pronucleus were reported for the first time in this species. Additionally, we observed the formation of the fertilization cone, which prevents polyspermic fertilization. Developmental stages at 22°C, 26°C and 30°C gave rise to fertilization rates at 91.12, 91.42 and 93.04% respectively. Hatching occurred at 25 hpf at 22°C, 16 hpf at 26°C and 11 hpf at 30°C and the hatching rates were 61.78%, 62.90% and 59.45%, respectively. At 22°C, the second polar body was extruded at ≈6 mpf and the male and female pronucleus fused at ≈10 mpf. This fundamental information is important for the field and opens up new possibilities in fish biotechnology, including micromanipulation and chromosome-set manipulation.


2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
N. Costa-Borges ◽  
J. Santaló ◽  
E. Ibàñez

Demecolcine-induced enucleation has been previously used to prepare developmentally competent enucleated mouse and bovine cytoplasts for nuclear transfer (Gasparrini et al. 2003 Biol. Reprod. 68, 1259–1266; Fischer-Russell et al. 2005 Mol. Reprod. Dev. 72, 161–170). The approach is technically simple, but the proportion of pre-activated oocytes that extrude all of the chromatin within the second polar body (PB) after exposure to demecolcine is relatively low, especially in the mouse (20%). This study was designed to explore the potential of other antimitotic drugs (nocodazole and vinblastine), besides demecolcine, to induce enucleation of mouse oocytes and to characterize the morphological progression of the treated oocytes after drug removal. Metaphase II (MII) oocytes were collected from cytochalasin D-1 (CD-1) females (6–12 weeks old) at 16 h post-hCG, activated in 7% ethanol (for a fast release from MII arrest) for 5 min and immediately treated for 15, 30, or 60 min with demecolcine (DEM, 0.4 �g mL-1), nocodazole (NOC, 0.3 �g mL-1), or vinblastine (VIN, 0.1 �g mL-1), prepared in calcium-free KSOM containing 10 mM strontium. Then, the oocytes were cultured in drug-free medium for up to 2 h, 6 h, or 20 h post-activation (p.a.) and fixed in a microtubule stabilization buffer-extraction fixative. A triple-labelling protocol for microtubules, microfilaments, and chromatin was used to analyze oocytes (approximately 60 per treatment) by fluorescence microscopy. Results were statistically analyzed by chi-square. At 2 h p.a., the highest rates of enucleation were achieved when pre-activated oocytes were treated with VIN (63.8%) or NOC (41.9%) for 15 min or with DEM (66.1%) for 30 min. Although antimitotic treatments did not affect activation rates (91.8–100%), a significant proportion of DEM- (19.6%) and of VIN-treated (15.5%) oocytes failed to complete second PB extrusion when compared to control (0%) or NOC-treated (4.8%) oocytes. From the total of the enucleated oocytes, 11.5%, 24.3%, and 29.7% had an incomplete second PB extrusion in NOC, VIN, and DEM groups, respectively, and therefore were classified as partially enucleated. Further culture of oocytes after drug withdrawal resulted in 100% of activated oocytes having a completely extruded second PB in all groups by 6 h p.a. and resulted in a significant and similar decrease in enucleation rates for all treatments by 6 h (20.3–34.9%) and 20 h p.a. (10.2–16.1%). This decrease might be caused by the reintegration of the chromosomes into the oocyte after incomplete second PB extrusion, or by re-fusion of second PBs to enucleated oocytes. Thus, our results show that both VIN and NOC, in addition to DEM, can be successfully applied to produce enucleated mouse cytoplasts, omitting the potentially harmful step (staining and ultraviolet illumination) of the traditional enucleation method. However, removal of the second PB at 2 h p.a. is recommended in order to achieve an irreversible oocyte enucleation. It remains to be demonstrated if the cytoplasts prepared with VIN or NOC are as competent as those prepared by DEM to support embryo development to term after being reconstructed by nuclear transfer.


Zygote ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Wakayama ◽  
R. Yanagimachi

To determine the minimal amount of cytoplasm necessary to support normal development of mouse oocytes, mature unfertilised oocytes were reduced in size into approximately 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 by removing the cytoplasm, then inseminated. More than 80% of 1/2-size oocyte were fertilised normally and almost all fertilised eggs developed to blastocysts. When transferred to foster females, 31% of the blastocysts developed into normal offspring. In contrast, 1/4- and 1/8-size oocytes, although they were penetrable by spermatozoa and extruded the second polar bodies, could not reach the 2-cell stage. In these oocytes, sperm nuclei did not develop into full-sized pronuclei. These results suggest that an oocyte can develop to full term after losing about half its cytoplasm, but not more.


Reproduction ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 235-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
T Azuma ◽  
T Kondo ◽  
S Ikeda ◽  
H Imai ◽  
M Yamada

EDTA saturated with Ca(2+), Fe(3+) or Cu(2+) can induce parthenogenetic activation of pig oocytes at the germinal vesicle stage, whereas EDTA saturated with Zn(2+), which is unable to chelate Zn(2+), does not, indicating that chelation of Zn(2+) with EDTA saturated with Ca(2+) (Ca-EDTA) in maturing pig oocytes plays a pivotal role in the induction of parthenogenetic activation of oocytes. In the present study, the involvement of Zn(2+) chelation in the induction of parthenogenetic activation of pig oocytes at the germinal vesicle stage was confirmed first by examining the effects of concomitant addition of Zn(2+), Cu(2+) or Ni(2+) at various concentrations together with 1 mmol Ca-EDTA l(-1) to the maturation medium. The titration experiments revealed that the pronuclear formation induced by 1 mmol Ca-EDTA l(-1) was completely inhibited by the addition of > 30 micromol Zn(2+) l(-1) to the medium, but not by the addition of Cu(2+) and Ni(2+) at any concentration examined. Second, bovine and mouse oocytes at the germinal vesicle stage were cultured in medium with or without 1 mmol Ca-EDTA l(-1) for 48 h to examine the effects of Ca-EDTA treatment on these oocytes during maturation culture. Most (70-86%) of the bovine oocytes that underwent germinal vesicle breakdown matured to the MII stage via the MI phase, regardless of whether Ca-EDTA was present for the first 24 h of culture. However, 61% of oocytes that had been cultured with Ca-EDTA for 48 h formed a pronucleus without a second polar body, whereas oocytes cultured in the absence of Ca-EDTA were not observed to form a pronucleus at any time during culture. However, even when mouse oocytes at the germinal vesicle stage were cultured for up to 48 h in maturation medium containing Ca-EDTA, pronuclear formation was not observed. Finally, when bovine oocytes that had been cultured with 1 mmol Ca-EDTA l(-1) for 48 h from the germinal vesicle stage were cultured further in medium without Ca-EDTA that was supplemented with 5% fetal calf serum, only 26% of the oocytes developed to the cleaved stage, and none could develop further.


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