Instituto de Neurociencias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) and Universidad Miguel Hernández (UMH), San Juan de Alicante, Spain.
Biol Reprod. 2023 Feb 13;108(2):197-203. doi: 10.1093/biolre/ioac194.
Mice are the most widely used animal model to study human diseases. However, the difficulty of in vivo recovery of mouse sperm has posed a limitation with its use in reproductive biology research. Several published techniques for obtaining sperm samples in vivo have been described, but most of them have several caveats. Critical limitations include poor reliability and significant mortality (Electroejaculation and drug-induced ejaculation), or the need for a large number of animals, careful programming, and laborious work (directed mating). Here, we describe a new approach for in vivo collection of sperm in the mouse via direct puncture of the epididymis to address these limitations. In addition, the technique is easy, safe, and reliable, allowing the animal to recover and maintain its fertility. In this way, punctual experiments could be carried out, or even more so, serial sampling of the same animal over time. Therefore, our approach allows for long-term and time-course experiments to study sperm characteristics under different treatments or conditions while maintaining the spermatogenic niche in vivo. In summary, we present our original approach as a powerful research tool to facilitate the study of spermatozoa relevant to various areas of biomedical research.
老鼠是研究人类疾病最广泛使用的动物模型。然而，体内回收老鼠精子的困难限制了它在生殖生物学研究中的应用。已经有几种发表的体内获取精子样本的技术，但其中大多数都有一些局限性。关键的局限性包括可靠性差和死亡率高（电刺激射精和药物诱导射精），或者需要大量的动物、精心的编程和费力的工作（定向交配）。在这里，我们描述了一种通过直接穿刺附睾来收集老鼠体内精子的新方法，以解决这些限制。此外，该技术简单、安全、可靠，允许动物恢复并保持其生育能力。通过这种方式，可以进行有针对性的实验，甚至可以对同一动物进行长时间的多次采样。因此，我们的方法允许进行长期和时间过程实验，以研究不同处理或条件下精子的特征，同时保持体内生精巢。总之，我们提出了我们的原创方法，作为一种强大的研究工具，以促进与生物医学研究各个领域相关的精子研究。
