A group of researchers at Cornell University in New York has got to be born the first litter of puppies through IVF, an achievement that could help save endangered species.
The finding, published today by the specialized Public Library of Science ONE and the university itself, publication could also mean progress to combat hereditary diseases in dogs, as well as to study the development of congenital diseases, since dogs share more than 350 disorders and hereditary traits with humans.
To achieve fertilization, researchers transferred 19 embryos previously treated the dog chosen to take shape, which gave birth to 7 healthy puppies, 2 of a mother and a beagle cocker spaniel father, and 5 from 2 pairs of fathers and mothers beagle.
“Since the mid-1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have not been successful” said Alex Travis, associate professor of reproductive biology at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine.
For the success of in vitro fertilization, researchers had to fertilize a mature egg with a sperm in a laboratory to produce an embryo, and then insert the embryo in a pregnant female at the right time in their reproductive cycle.
The first challenge was collecting mature eggs from the female ready to be fertilized, but they encountered the difficulty of knowing what time was optimal for fertilization, because the reproductive cycles of the dogs are different from other mammals.
In this regard, Experts saw, leaving the egg to mature a day, your chances of success were greater.
Once successful fertilization of the egg, the next hurdle was that the female tract of pregnant bitch was to point for fertilization, for which the researchers, led by Jennifer Nagashima, uterine conditions simulated in the laboratory.
So, the scientists found that adding magnesium to the environment, the body of the pregnant mother Best welcomed the arrival of sperm.
“We made these two changes, and now we succeed in fertilization rates of 80 to 90 percent,” Travis said.
The final challenge for researchers residing in frozen embryos.
Freezing embryos allows researchers to insert them into the oviducts receptors (called fallopian tubes in humans) at the right time in your cycle reproductive, occurring only once or twice a year.
In this way, the first of the pups born from a frozen in the Western Hemisphere hand group of scientists from Cornell University saw the embryo light in 2013, but has not until now that they have achieved with this technique, the birth of a litter.
“We could freeze and use sperm banks for artificial insemination. We can also freeze oocytes, but in the absence of IVF, we could not use them. Now we can use this technique to preserve the genetics of endangered species, “said the professor.
The IVF will conserve animal breeds to store sperm and eggs of species and again to gestarlas in addition to reproduce endangered species.
As explained Travis, with the new techniques of modification of the genome, researchers in genetic diseases may prevent dogs have hereditary diseases.
“With a combination of gene modification techniques and in vitro fertilization, he added, they can potentially prevent genetic diseases before they develop” a also beneficial to understand many diseases suffered by humans and also affect advance canids. Washington, Dec. 9 (EFE).
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