Abstract

colloids has been used to select normal sperm for assisted reproduction in several species. Animal models can sometimes be used as a preliminary step to investigate sperm preparation methods that are potentially of use for human fertility treatments. In this study bovine semen was prepared using three variants of the single-layer centrifugation sperm selection technique (Small, Mini, Mini-EP) with Bovicoll (Androcoll-B). Computer-assisted sperm motility analysis, the hypo-osmotic swelling test, and the sperm chromatin structure assay were performed on unselected (control) and SLC-selected sperm samples. Mini and Mini-EP gave the highest yield of motile spermatozoa, progressive motility and membrane integrity. In vitro fertilization trials were performed to investigate the fertilizing ability of the frozen-thawed bovine spermatozoa selected with Bovicoll. Mini-SLC (single-layer centrifugation) and swim-up (Control) were performed and cleavage rate and blastocyst rate did not differ significantly between groups. As there was a trend to an increased number of cells in blastocysts in the SLC group, the Mini-SLC method is at least as good as swim-up for selecting frozen-thawed bull spermatozoa for in vitro fertilization (IVF). This method could potentially be used to prepare human sperm for assisted reproduction.

Keywords

Bovine; Computer-assisted semen analysis (CASA); In vitro fertilization (IVF); In vitro production (IVP) of embryos; Single-layer centrifugation; Sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA)

Published in

Zygote
2016, volume: 24, number: 6, pages: 825-830

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